Grim Dawn

mkopec

mkopec

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Thing that I found for leveling is picking one skill that really scales well through at least the first 2 difficulties or therabouts. Then respec later into those "builds" they have showcased on their forums and such when you have the levels and points, devotions. Like forcwave for soldier, or word of pain for inquisitor. Each class usually has one good leveling skill. When they get weaker later, like some do, supplement them with others or with another class. So dont spread yourself too thin in the beginning. Pick one or two skills and go to town as far as you can. Most of those builds they have on forums and such are all pretty much set up with a "set" of armor in mind, so even if you level up you will still have to grind that set to make the build do what it does.

Edit: yeah those beginner builds are good because the dude explains what to level with to get to the end game. Most guides dont.
 
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Nirgon

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The faction gear is great stuff. The powders etc go a long way too.

Make sure you buy and use the writs they sell to double your gains when you get the appropriate level.
 
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ronne

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I'm over the hump on veteran I think. Once I got to level 10 or so and actually had magic/rare items in all my slots it all started coming together finally.

Holy shit those first couple enemy hero monsters were a slog though.
 
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ronne

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Am I wrong to just basically instantly filter out magic items in this fancy new loot filter? I don't think I've seen one in 10 levels that was even remotely worth using?

Also goddamn some of the little side dungeons are crazily high level compared to what I'm doing. Couldn't figure out why shit was so hard again until I realized this weird cave full of demons was 7 levels above me.
 
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Hateyou

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ronne said:
Am I wrong to just basically instantly filter out magic items in this fancy new loot filter? I don't think I've seen one in 10 levels that was even remotely worth using?

Also goddamn some of the little side dungeons are crazily high level compared to what I'm doing. Couldn't figure out why shit was so hard again until I realized this weird cave full of demons was 7 levels above me.
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Filter out whites as soon as slots are filled, filter out yellows once you start getting some greens and blues, imo.

Also, get those mods that are linked in that meltycakes build guide. The rainbow loot thing is fantastic, as is the item assistant. They are not cheats, just storage and visual aids for item affix rarity.

Also, yeah some side dungeons are for later. Sounds like you went into the cave that requires “a strange key”. The boss in there can be tough in the beginning, the mobs too.
 
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Kirun

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How good is the "base" game? Is it one of those that isn't even worth playing without all the DLC, or is the DLC something that can be enjoyed after completing the original game?
 
mkopec

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I would say the DLC is like "acts" added to the base game, two of them just extend the game past the OG game and both can be played at all difficulties. They add 1 class each which you can mix and match with all the other classes so it expands the game in that way too. The Malmouth expansion adds the necro class and the new one adds the oathkeeper.

I would say for the full experience just buy the whole thing, But it can definitely be played without.
 
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Hateyou

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Kirun said:
How good is the "base" game? Is it one of those that isn't even worth playing without all the DLC, or is the DLC something that can be enjoyed after completing the original game?
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I think it’s pretty good, I probably have 300-400 hours in it. If you have the DLC right from the beginning and do it all you will honestly outlevel the pace of the game and be pretty high level before you get to the highest third difficulty. They should have removed the second difficulty if you have the DLCs or something. It’s not necessarily a big deal to outlevel it before you get to it though, the final difficulty can be tough, especially first time playing. And the whole point of the final difficulty is farming what you want so if you max out 1/3 through the final, it’s not that big of deal, good gear is still dropping as you plow through it the third time.

TLDR: if you’re on the fence, buy the base For $5 and beat it once. If you love the game, spend $20 more (it’s all on sale atm, idk how long) and get the two big DLCs at the end of the fourth act.

If money is a concern I recommend base > FG >>Malmouth >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>crucible.
 
Hateyou

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mkopec said:
I would say the DLC is like "acts" added to the base game, two of them just extend the game past the OG game and both can be played at all difficulties. They add 1 class each which you can mix and match with all the other classes so it expands the game in that way too. The Malmouth expansion adds the necro class and the new one adds the oathkeeper.

I would say for the full experience just buy the whole thing, But it can definitely be played without.
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I think Malmouth adds both the necro and the uh, gunslinger guy.
 
mkopec

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There is also a slew of mods you can get for this game which change up everything from classes, adding a whole bunch, down to mob and boss spawns and shit. I fucked around with that for a while too. Some are pretty good. Pretty big modding community.
 
Borzak

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I have the base game and Ashes DLC. I need to get back into it. I was starting out and that's when the website was down for a while and couldn't get into builds and such.
 
Hateyou

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mkopec said:
There is also a slew of mods you can get for this game which change up everything from classes, adding a whole bunch, down to mob and boss spawns and shit. I fucked around with that for a while too. Some are pretty good. Pretty big modding community.
Click to expand...

Best thing about the big mods is that it’s separate from the main game so doesn’t fuck anything up. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there for it. The one with all the titan class classes (And like 30
Others) was pretty cool.
 
ronne

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What do all these build guides mean when they talk about soft caps in leveling skills? Can you go over the max skill allocation with item bonuses, or do they just stop scaling at a certain point?
 
Hateyou

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ronne said:
What do all these build guides mean when they talk about soft caps in leveling skills? Can you go over the max skill allocation with item bonuses, or do they just stop scaling at a certain point?
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It’s been a while but I believe soft cap on skills is how many you can put in a skill with points, so Skill one starts at 0/16 and you can soft cap it to 16/16 by putting points into it. Then you can boost it with gear by 10 to 26/16. I’m pretty sure the hard cap is always +10 to whatever the displayed max is. You could also put 8 points into it, and add 18 with gear (exaggeration) to get 26/16.

Searched it and that’s correct but they explain it a little better than I do. From Reddit:

“Soft cap is basically the "maximum" number you see in your skills menu, eg x/12 points spent.

Hard cap is always 10 points over the soft cap, thats the point when putting more points into these skills wont do anything, so then maximum you can really get is 22/12 and adding one more point will leave you at 22/12.“
 
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Zindan

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Played this for about 40 minutes 5yrs ago, at the time I didn't care how dated the game looked, so stopped playing to go do other stuff. Did the DLC's ever make the game look better?
 
ronne

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Hateyou said:
It’s been a while but I believe soft cap on skills is how many you can put in a skill with points, so Skill one starts at 0/16 and you can soft cap it to 16/16 by putting points into it. Then you can boost it with gear by 10 to 26/16. I’m pretty sure the hard cap is always +10 to whatever the displayed max is. You could also put 8 points into it, and add 18 with gear (exaggeration) to get 26/16.

Searched it and that’s correct but they explain it a little better than I do. From Reddit:

“Soft cap is basically the "maximum" number you see in your skills menu, eg x/12 points spent.

Hard cap is always 10 points over the soft cap, thats the point when putting more points into these skills wont do anything, so then maximum you can really get is 22/12 and adding one more point will leave you at 22/12.“
Click to expand...

Yea so I assume the scaling over that "soft cap" isn't as good then? All these guides say to respec points back out of stuff as you get gear from skills to fill it out.
 
Pyros

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ronne said:
Yea so I assume the scaling over that "soft cap" isn't as good then? All these guides say to respec points back out of stuff as you get gear from skills to fill it out.
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Ît actually depends, iirc some skills scale better in "ultimate levels" which is past the soft cap, and some skills scale worse(and some A LOT worse). Or well when I say better I mean better than the last few points, generally scaling goes down as you put more points(so 15 > 16 is worse than 1 > 2) and then for some 16 > 17 is better than 15 > 16 but still not as good as the first points. You just kinda need to check the values on a tool or ingame once you have the stuff. Some skills also have tresholds for certain things, like say +1 skeleton every 5 levels or whatever it was, so 19 > 20 is a huge improvement but 20 > 21 not so much. So you aim at certain amounts generally and adjust your points based on your gear to compensate, but you don't get that much +skill level gear when lvling so it's not like a huge deal a lot of the time.

A lot of builds will use +all skills and like 1point in stuff to still get good value, even when lvling 1pointers tend to be pretty good even if situational, since they just cost 1 point.
 
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