Your Grim Dawn Story

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

Pazuzu started a thread over on the new Titan Quest forum about how he found that game. So I thought it would be interesting to hear how you all found/first heard/discovered Grim Dawn?

Here’s mine:

Well, I guess you could say it was a lucky chance buy for me. I came late to gaming in general, must have been in my late 40s when I got my own PC as opposed to sharing my husband’s. I played city builders: Zeus: Master of Olympus (was this a foreshadow of what was to come?), Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, early Anno stuff, Port Royale, Children of the Nile. I’d thought occasionally of trying an RPG, but never got around to it. Then in early 2007 I spotted the Royal Edition of Two Worlds in our local Media Markt store. It looked interesting and was in English so I bought it, installed it and played it. Most importantly I enjoyed it. I played it several times, though I never could get the hang of a caster in that game.

We were going to go to the US in November 2007 to visit my relatives there and because my home state was celebrating it’s 100th birthday. So I made a list of a few RPGs to try and buy while I was there: Morrowind, Oblivion, and a couple of others I can’t remember now. We were in the local Best Buys and I was picking these up for purchase and saw a Gold edition of TQ/IT on the shelf nearby. I didn’t know much about it except that it was an RPG like the others, but reading the blurb on the back it sounded like I’d enjoy it since I like Greek mythology, etc. So that got added to the purchases.

Once back home I installed the games and tried them out. Didn’t really like Morrowind or Oblivion, but kept at them for a bit. It wasn’t until some time in 2008 that I got around to installing TQIT. I’d also purchased the strategy guide for it (I’m a sucker for those) so that helped me understand how it worked, but I kept hitting a brick wall with my builds. I was getting more and more frustrated, but I wanted to continue to play the game. So I tried to go to Iron Lore’s website to see if I could find any information/advice that would help me, only to find the company had closed down. So I googled and that came up with titanquest.net and that was it. There was so much info there and many helpful members of the forum willing to help me with their advice. I learnt a lot there and became a better player. I beat Typhon and danced around the room with joy. I went on to beat Hades. I was hooked. Needless to say I’d become a member at TQ.net and over the years was able to pass on my own knowledge of the game to others.

Because it was the very first forum I ever joined I wanted a username that reflected the mythology in the game itself. Now I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the film “Jason and the Argonauts” (which is another story), but thinking of that film brought to mind the character Medea who helps Jason steel the Golden Fleece. So Medea Fleecestealer I became. :slight_smile:

You could say the game has been a continuing influence on my life over these last 10 years since it was on TQ.net that I first saw news of a new project by some of the devs who’d worked at Iron Lore. As I enjoyed TQIT so much I was pretty sure I’d like whatever they were doing so I went to their website, pre-purchased a copy and joined the forum. As we all know that became Grim Dawn. I upgraded my purchase during the Kickstarter and started playing the game as soon as it was out in alpha. In 2016 I was asked if I’d like to become a playtester for GD. And now that TQ.net has folded here I am the proud owner of the new www.titanquestfans.net forum.

So lucky chance buy? It certainly was for me. :slight_smile:

So that’s how I came to know about GD. What’s your story?

2

I’m not ashamed to admit that i actually pirated Titan Quest back when it came out. Mainly because i was broke and the game seemed to be in the similar style of Dungeon Siege 2, which is a game i played a lot around that time.

Still remember throwing my corpse against Typhon with a build that i think it was dual wield Conqueror because i remember using two Sabertooth.

My brother bought the Gold Edition of the game when he got a new pc back in very early 2008 and me and him played the hell out of it, specially him. He literally spent hundred of hours farming the Secret Passage for every legendary.

Then several years passed and i completely forgot about Titan Quest. Then i decided to play it again late 2015 and it was around that time some fans of the game were talking about Grim Dawn, which seemed to have been made by the same developers of Titan Quest. I pirated this game too but i actually feel ashamed about it because i actually had money at that time.

After just reaching level 25 with my first character, i decided to actually purchase the game and it’s now my most played game in a long, long time.

3

Found out about Grim Dawn from an ARPG thread on an imageboard, decided to look into it. Had been a huge fan of Diablo 2 before the LoD 1.10 patch and had already gone through both Torchlight games and was asking around about what else was out there.

4

Not 100% sure how I first found it, either a reference on another site or I noticed it on Steam maybe. I knew I was gunna buy it but I was low on funds at the moment (I’m not known for my patience) so I pirated the shit out of it and bought it a week later on payday.

5

For me I kept seeing Grim Dawn in my suggested feed on steam since early 2015, at which point I believe the game was still priced at $30, at the time I though “Hm, doesn’t seem worth the investment at the moment”. So I held off on looking into it, also if memory serves I’d just gotten Skyrim on PC that past winter sale, so I had that occupying my time.

fast forward 4 months later, I’d seen GD drop to $25, and strongly considered it at that point, but as is great with the internet age if a game looks interesting, but you aren’t entirely sure about it someone somewhere has a video showing gameplay. So with that in mind I went and watched a video and I can’t recall at the time who it was, but they were running the Arkovian undercity. watching it strongly reminded me of both Diablo I and II in the way the game looked and felt and the gameplay also strongly reminding me of it as well.

The decision was made, I’d purchased GD and registered for the forums. that afternoon/evening/night was spent playing GD for 10 hours straight. the ONLY game I’d ever played that long in one sitting was Diablo II back in the day when I was like 13. When a game can have you play for that long without realizing it, it’s pretty obvious that it’s a damned good game. I played the game like I was possessed, pretty sure I’d clocked 50+ hours in the first week I owned it alone. I was so convinced that Grim Dawn was an absolute gem, I’d gone out and gotten both my best friend and brother copies of the game out of my own pocket, They too, have both broken 500+ hours in GD but pale in comparison to my near 1800 hour play time.

Lo and behold a little more than 2 years after I’d had purchased the game and joined the community I was asked if I’d like to join the testing group, said yes and now here I am.

there are a few games I feel like were disappointing purchases in hindsight, Grim Dawn will never be considered one of those, It’s brought back a feeling that I’d been missing in ARPG’s since I stopped playing D2.

6

It was highlighted in a GoG sales drive. It was going cheap so I checked out a few reviews on the internet, popped along to various forums to get a feel for the community, watched a few game-play videos of various builds and then purchased it via GoG. Played through the campaign on Vet and decided that I’d payed too little for it so I went and bought the rest of the content 'cus… Kama!

The rest is 300ish hours of fun so far … and The Sentinel :furious:

7

I played a lot of Diablo 2 LOD in my childhood, but I was away from games since then, lacking a gamer computer and free time.

Back in 2013 I started to teach my wife how to play D2LOD and she enjoyed it. We played a lot until we managed to buy Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls in january of 2016.

The game was cool at beginning, but there were some stuff that always annoiyed me, being the bigger one: the builds are directly linked to the set itens, and the set itens force you to play in a very specific way. You don’t have the freedom to customize your build and play like you want.

Then in june we got bored and started seeking for similar games. We bought Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn. We disliked Torchligh 2 because it was too cartoony. Grim Dawn was intriguing, but my wife at first disliked the game (she was too used to D3 graphics and GD was too “dark” in her opinion).

We then started a long journey playing Skyrim. That game is amazing (despite of the tons of bugs) and we played a lot. I still played some games after Skyrim.

Then we played Dragon Ball Xenoverse a lot, and in a Steam Sale, bought DB Xenoverse 2 and the GD Expansion Ashes of Malmouth. She disliked XV2 (in her opinion the controls are messy) and we decided to take a shot in Grim Dawn.

That was an amazing idea! We are playing this stunning and wonderful game since then. We are completely addicted. I’m still mersmerized in the huge effort that the developers put in this game to make it so good. Even in the smaller things, everything is so well done!

Now I have more 3 Batman Arkham games, 4 Assassin’s Creed games, The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3 + expansions, all of them waiting to be played, but I just want to play Grim Dawn.

Thanks Devs and all the Staff!

8

I was not a fan of ARPGs. I liked the story in Diablo I and II, so I tolerated the repetitive gameplay. Torchlight I and II were fun briefly, but lacked any depth in character building. The initial release of Diablo III and it’s marketplace drove me off for quite awhile.

I didn’t really get into the genre until Diablo III Reaper of Souls came out. It took a lot of play before the interplay between character build and equipment became clear to me, but once I bought-in, tinkering with build and load out became addictive. Eventually, I tired of that and went looking for something with similar appear.

Grim Dawn just blew me away. Beautiful and with a cool story, that was enough for one run-through, but the depth of the character and combat system hooked me.

9

I wish I knew.

Firefox tells me that I bookmarked grimdawn.com on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 00:42:55 (EST). Maybe that date is significant somehow but I can barely remember last week much less six years ago.

1 Like
10

D3 drove me off for awhile, but once i got that itch to play an ARPG again i google searched some new ones, and found POE and GD. Bought GD fairly soon after but did not get the EA version :eek: so i played POE for about two years.

I joined the the GD forums around that time (those two years later) with a horribly written “introduction” of myself. In that thread the big Z informed me that i could have been playing sense 2013 :o After that day its been GD all the way.

11

Blizzard made the mistake of banning me from D3, accusing me of botting but, worst of all, they denied me the chance to defend myself from a false accusation.

I then destroyed all my Blizzard owned games, which were Warcraft 3, 2* D2 and D2LoD (physical copies) and D3 (digital copy). Also destroyed the authenticator as well as a mouse mat from them.

A few months later, they contacted me to know if i wanted to participate in a promotion they were offering for Overwatch (IIRC), to which i replied something like:

"The Nerve!

1st you ban me without reason: you may have thought you had but you didn’t and, worse of all, deny me the right to defend myself. Then you contact me like nothing’s happened and try to have me buy another of your products?

NEVER contact me again"

I then searched around for other games like D2 / D3 and found GD. bought it and was playing it regularly until i ditched Windows permanently in favor of Ubuntu. Took a few months to return to GD because i had literally zero experience with Linux when i changed to Ubuntu.

12

When I was a kid, I was playing Civ III with a friend over at his house when he asked me what I thought of Greek Mythology. A good long conversation ensued that ultimately culminated in him showing me vanilla Titan Quest. I fell in love with it at first sight. And so began several years of my life devoted to the title within a small but close friend-group.

Fast forward to 2012-2013(?) when the GD Kickstarter was going on. Me and that friend were playing some Soulvizier when, after that gaming session, he told me that the makers of TQ had apparently started a Kickstarter for a new game following the Iron Lore/THQ collapse. I was indifferent to the matter; I obstinately would not back anything on Kickstarter, as the service was new and rife with scams. Still, I hoped the product would come through. It seemed a neat enough concept.

The next year I needed an RPG fix. My freshman year of college had ended and I was beginning to ween off of a RIFT binge (which, as it happens, I’m now getting back into RIFT at the time of this writing). A Skype call I was in was discussing Grim Dawn’s Early Access, which rung a bell for me. The name seemed familiar, so I looked it up on Steam and, remembering that this was that thing from Kickstarter, decided to give it a go. I only had a few days to play it before going on a vacation to Maine, but it took me mere hours to fall in love with the game with the same passion I had had for Titan Quest. I was addicted; so much so that on the road to Maine, I found myself on my phone catching up on all the Grim Misadventures, loving all the transparency and humor put into them. I remember sitting in a Pizza Hut in the middle of nowhere and staring at the ominous door of the Gates of Anguish, a dungeon I had not yet delved into (I believe I had only just killed Cronley). When I got back from the trip, I instantly made my account here on the forums to keep in tune with the goings-on of the game, something I had not done with Titan Quest.

I would lurk for another two months before finally making my introductory post in September, and a few weeks after that, I made my second thread, this time in the Ideas and Feedback section. Guess what the subject was. My feedback, complaints, and arguments would continue into the following years, occasionally striking up some…ahem…more heated discussions with Crate employees. Some people seemed to like what I had to say for whatever reason, and I got a lot of people asking me why I wasn’t a playtester at the time. Eventually, Zantai would cave and make the mistake of making me a playtester for the game, for whatever reason. That was just about time for the Crucible testing to begin.

More recently, the ‘feedback’ I’ve received for my own involvement in the community has been divisively mixed. Some have told me outright that they missed ‘the old me’, which presumably was more eager to disagree with and hold my ground against some of Crate’s decisions. From my point of view, all that’s changed is that Crate has either made it very clear that they won’t be changing some things, or Crate is doing things that I don’t disagree with, leaving me without cause to question them.

Despite me no longer being so keen to flame the devs, and other than a few ‘controversies’ on the Grim Dawn discord, other people still seem to pay attention to when I’m blabbering about on the internet. Wish I knew why; it sounds like a great mistake on their part.

I’d say that, for the past 10 months, I’ve averaged three questions a month about why I’m not a Crate employee. How’s that for a can of worms? :stuck_out_tongue: I’d wager that’s about the full extent of my involvement with the game that my “Grim Dawn Story” will reach. When I first started with the game, I had little intention of being a playtester, Discord-moderator, twitch-streamer, or anything else. I just wanted to enjoy a good story, get some cool loot, and kill some dangerous bosses. And, really, that’s all I’m after even still.

13

Long time ARPG player, dating all the way back to Diablo 1 & 2—I’ve spent more hours on those games than I dare count.
From singleplayer to multiplayer, softcore to hardcore, self-challenges, private servers, mods: I had exhausted those games.

I played Titan Quest extensively as well, from the earliest retail versions where there were quite some balance issues, but the game was still a lot of fun.
Knowing GD was basically TQ 2, it was a day one purchase and I binged the hell out of it.

You may have noticed I’m not as active on the forums lately, that’s because I’d explored most of the builds I’d theorycrafted so I’ve been playing the game less lately.
I still read the forums daily, I just don’t post as much as that takes more time if you’re not just writing mindless spam, which I don’t. At least I don’t think so. :slight_smile:

After beating Gladiator 170 with two non-meta builds I was satisfied for the moment, but eventually I always get that itch again after a break and it starts all over again.
The latest Misadventure definitely looks interesting and I’m looking forward to the new content and balance changes.

14

I think it was back in 2010, I was still playing Titan Quest a little and there was a notice on TQDefiler about Grim Dawn. So I checked out the forum, joined (originally under another handle) in 2011 and have been following the game ever since.

It’s been great to follow the game from its infancy (I remember dev polls about what to call Devil’s Crossing) through the kickstarter to now.

15

Way back, I messed around with the original Diablo and played a decent amount of Necro in Diablo II, no big deal.

It wasn’t until Torchlight came out that I realized: “Wait, so I can get wasted… and click on stuff to level up and accumulate loot!!!”. Lol

Shortly thereafter, sometime around 2012, a buddy of mine recommended Titan Quest… I was immediately impressed by the graphics and dual-class system etc.

I honestly can’t remember exactly how I first heard about Grim Dawn. I think it was just clicking on a random link somewhere…

Anyways, I bought into EA back in late 2014 and I’ve been playing ever since.

16

way back in the day, I discovered Diablo
the game immediately appealed to me and I played a lot of it, next to other games of that era
then one day I visited a friend who had just bought D2 and at that moment I had no idea that it had just come out
I was immediately hooked, it looked revolutionary to me compared to the first game
I immediately bought it and from that moment on I played it extensively, for years
when Lord of Destruction came out I also bought it without a second thought
somewhere along the way a friend showed me Titan Quest, which I also bought
I didn’t play much of it though as I prefered D2 for its theme and atmosphere
the greek mythology thing never really appealed to me

some years ago D3 was anounced, I was very eager and excited
that is, until I learned about it requiring you to be online all the time and the auction house
I started considering alternatives, and then Torchlight 2 came out
to me that was the game D3 should have been and I started playing it instead of D2
after a while it also came with modding tools, so I started my own mod overhauling the crafting system and adding a lot of new items as well as items that referenced D2 and TL1
this caught the attention of Salan, and he asked me to be a part of the team that was making the Synergies mod, as an item designer
I had a great time doing that, and as some of you may know that mod turned out to be very succesful
interest in the game and mod from the community waned though and other ARPGs appeared on the horizon

I started playing POE very early on, and recommended it to the same friend that recommended TQ to me
I was at the time doing weekly multiplayer sessions with him and together we had made the transition from D2 to TL2
now we started to play POE

I don’t exactly remember how I first heard about Grim Dawn, I read about it online or saw it on steam
anyway, I instantly loved it and bought it in early access
at the time it only had one act, which I finished not very long after that
money was tight for my friend though and I couldn’t convince him of GD
also because he was a bit shortsighted on the fact that there would be more content coming in the future
he really didn’t get the early access idea
for that reason I would be playing more POE because I also wanted to build my characters and it is a good game in its own right

sadly, and nothing to do with the above, friendships come and go
I also started to run into a lot of lag in POE and grew iritated with the economy aspect of the game and having to start over all the time, making gear and progression worthless
I started playing GD a lot more, and nowadays I hardly play anything else
I had lurked on the forum for years but relatively recently I made my introductory post and I now look here daily

strangely, I haven’t yet touched the modding tools, there is simply too much in terms of builds and collecting gear I still want to do…

17

I am sorry to Necro’ing this Post, but i’m not sure if there would be any neccesity to open a new Topic for that but i also find the topic too interesting to let it slip as well.

My Story

Well to be honest, i’m that kind of guy who truly enjoy’s alternatives for Games he enjoy / love and even more if it counts as his favorite (genre). One of my first Games back in my younger days (should’ve been like 6 or 7) which i rememer which i played was Diablo, and since than the Series grew to me and followed me a huge part of my life.

Still, as great as i find Diablo (even nowdays), i keep my Eyes open for alternatives, because in enjoy exploring different worlds with their lore or new unique Features, which wouldn’t have fitted Diablo and such.

Though most of the Games, for me atleast, which tried to catch the appeal of Diablo, did fail and there were only a very few which i considered closely to Diablo. Titan Quest was the first attempt for an alternative, though while i enjoyed the new Scenario, it didn’t play (for me personally) in the same league as Diablo. It was enjoyable, but it never was the Game was Diablo was to me, a Game were i came often back and played it, sometimes more casual, sometimes more intense, but the Diablo world and gameplay kept me addicted. Still i kept my Eyes on alternatives, and while there were some (like mentioned Titan Quest) which had it’s own appeal like Sacred or Dungeon Siege, it was Torchlight the absolute first Game which captured my interest and i dig into it. It wasn’t flawless for sure, and for me it had a huge missing feature which was important to me with “no Multiplayer” but overall i really loved the Game and was for me my personal first true alternative for Diablo. And than Diablo did land.

Now; People who don’t know me and reflect their own bias would think for someone who grew up with Diablo, Diablo 3 killed the Series to me, but i’ve to admit after the first 100 hours when the Hype cooled down, i was kinda dissapointed, but it never was for me no “true” “Diablo”, but it had some flaws like the well-known (RM)AH thing. It was over the Years with “fixing” some flaws, adding new Content and the Reaper of Souls, and finally the Console-Port which offered me one major aspect which is important to me: beeing able to play offline and locally Multiplay but also Online. No forced online-only nonsense like the PC Version of the Game.

Still as much as i love Diablo 3 and is nowdays my Favorite Diablo Game, the fact (and that counts for every game) it’s impossible for one Game(series) to fullfill every desire and wished, because they need to stick to their Games to show consistency. I loved the story*(it’s one of the reasons why i replay from time to time the campaign of Diablo 3, because the Story plus Storytelling has blown me away and that’s rare for the Genre… and lore in general was great in Diablo from the beginning), the Graphics grew to me and find it now very fitting for the series, even more due it’s age better than “realistic Graphics” and also loved the overall Gameplay, but while i understand why Blizzard have gone the Route, i still missed an Skilltree(though i’ve to point that out, because it kinda p*** me off to hear that nonsense quite often. People claim it’s a core aspect of the series, which is not because they introduced it with Diablo 2… first game did work with skillbooks)* and like i mentioned, in general i keep my eyes open for good alternatives. Than Torchlight 2 hit the market and i was blown away how great this Game was. Runic really did know how to inspire themself of the older Games, but still deliever their own thing with their own world and touch. And when Torchlight 1 was an loveletter to Diablo 1, Torchlight 2 was the loveletter to Diablo 2, which was at that time a real blessing (if you remember when torchlight 2 was released. It was in the same years as diablo 3 way before RoS and other great updates went into Diablo 3), because it was soon after my hype cooled down and i my disappointment 've gotten stronger. It offered me something which Diablo 3 couldn’t*(and obviously that counts vica versa as well, as example: The Story, Storytelling and Lore can’t compete against Diablo [3]… still was somewhat enjoyable)* and is my third Favorite of this Genre of all time for reason.

After that it was when i heard about Grim Dawn for the first time, due i visited quite often some Torchlight and Diablo Forums, heard about it’s based on the engine of Titan Quest and even “some” people work on it. And to be absolutely honest with you guys, at first i wasn’t impressed with the Game, i kept my eye on it but back in that days i still believed way more in the Path of Exile project and was the game which i was excited for. (ironic to see that nowdays i truly despise[overexaggerating obviously] PoE and GD ended up as one of my absolute top 3 favorites of this Genre of all time!) But awhile after that once Grim Dawn entered in Steam, i don’t know exactly what it was, but i simply bought myself into the early access, and like Diablo 3 over the time the Game really grew to me.

It’s thanks to the work of Crate where they improved and improved, and the game ended much bigger (and better) than initial planned, and their After-Release-Support with many Updates and two huge Expansions-Packs which are amazing and many much more aspects which made this Game as great as it is today. It didn’t replace Diablo for me, but i have another Game(Series) and World which i love and appreciate. So at this point i’ve to point out again: Thanks Crate for your great work!

18

My brother and I used to play Diablo 2 a lot. We never did builds or that crap just played the heck out of the game. So Diablo 3 showed up and… was a real let down.

After a while I was working and ran into another gamer who kept talking up PoE so gave it a shot… didn’t hate it… it wasn’t that great in all honesty. Then a read a post talking about Grim Dawn while trying to figure out what I was doing wrong with PoE… turns out I just wasn’t nuts enough to worship the lords random like the rest of the PoE crowd does, that resulted in my looking into Grim Dawn… and ended with me buying the game.

19

I was looking for an alternative to Diablo 3 a few weeks back and the name ‘Grim Dawn’ has resounded in my mind (Though I don’t know how I came to know the name). So I bought it along with all the expansions and DLCs. I have to admit, I didn’t like it for the first hour and I tried to call for a refund. But after a while, I looked back and gave it another go - this time for 7 hours straight. I have 630 hours of Grim Dawn clocked since.

I also convinced my girlfriend and two best friends to buy it and play it with me. Looking forward to play with my gf again later :slight_smile:

All in all, Grim Dawn is an amazing gem of a game.

20

Was surfing the new game projects on Kickstarter back in 2012, and saw the page for a “Grim Dawn”. Upon reading Arthur Bruno’s description of the game, and that he was the lead designer for Titan Quest, and how he had just acquired the rights to use the TQ engine, I immediately backed the project.
Titan Quest was (and still is) my favorite ARPG of all time, so I figured any game using the engine, and being developed by veterans of Iron Lore would have to be good. And of course it was! :smiley: