Grim Dawn

yeah. logged in yesterday to check it out. shaman seems fun. nice elemental/nature summons.
Still can't say I'd recommend the game over PoE ever. Probably not even over diablo.

They just released a new update this morning and the game is feature complete now. Still technically in EA, but there shouldn't be any more than just tweaks for balancing between now and release.

I wasn't going to buy it until full release but now seems like a good time to get it while it's -40% (not the lowest it's ever been, but it's only like a buck-fifty difference anyway). Whenever they do a full release early next year, it will probably be full price.

Only played a couple hours so far, but I'm loving the game. The engine seems very well done, maxed out all settings and it never budges from v-synced 60 fps. Nice lighting and shadows, movement and attack animations are very smooth, etc.

Playing a Nightblade and hit L10 just before I had to leave for xmas eve stuff. What second class pairs well with it?

yeah. to repeat mostly what I said before.
the game itself, in a vacuum is pretty good. visuals are good. the storyline/worldbuilding is great.(better then poe) skills are pretty impactful.

mastery system is a letdown. based on Titanquest. and largely the same. flaws included. skills are very limited, with very limited modifications of them. there simply is not endless builds like in PoE.

This recent patch added the domains, which sortof like PoE's passive tree. a neat addition, adds new skills, and more stats mostly.

the game does not use procedural generated content. the map does not change, save minor "roadblocks" at chokepoints to force you to run different paths from time to time. Otherwise, farming content is farming the same stuff over and over. there are also once per character chests throughout the world as well. It DOES have hidden content, along these lines. Which is neat. but also, does not play into the replayablity of ARPGS well.

Stats and gear are not perfect either. be aware, it is like POE with +damage adding together. it all adds together. ADDS. so like +550 damage from spirit, +400 cold damage from various gear, +200 cold from skill, gives you 1150 cold damage. then, another skill which reduces damage by 50%. well, that just subtracts 50 from your 1150. But unlike POE, lacks the "less", "more" or local vs global to make it more complex, and effective. Its simple version just trivializes any individual source of damage, or debuff.

All around, worth a playthrough. I won't be ditching PoE for it though. even disregarding the price point.

That's ok with me, I ditched PoE long ago and I still think it has the worst loot system ever devised by mankind. I'm really not interested in anything but single player or LAN coop in my ARPGs, so any game that balances loot drops around a shitty 'economy' is never going to work for me for very long.

Torchlight 2 is more my style, except that I never found any of the classes fun in the long run. Hoping that the TQ-ish design turns out better here.

I like Titan quest more than Diablo, and grim dawn more than Titan quest. Glad I finally picked it up. Going Shaman/Soldier focus on passive AOE+bleeds and trauma dots. Mix in the ground slam that chain lightning+stun I am wrecking stuff.

Skills seem strange so far. I'm doing occultist/pyro stuff right now and have some pets, but I don't really have any spells to cast to do damage with. Wound up just using a generic fireball skill from one of the components I found as my bread and butter damage, which feels kinda backwards, but whatever it's working.

yeah. along the way they did realize the class trees weren't enough for skills.
so, did add them to gear.

so now you can get skills via, gear, class tree, or constellations. A bit more robust then I probably suggested. the class tree skills have more talents, and builds directed for them. but doesnt mean much as long as you are geared for any given skill, with proper stats.


most of my play is pure arcanist. skyshards primary skill.

I made a summoner style guy, occultist and shaman hybrid with 3 pets so far, more later once I'm further in the tree. It's effective so far on veteran difficulty, but a little dull. I mostly just walk around doing nothing while pets fight. I may restart as a more active build, some flavor of the rogue tree maybe.

Is the latest steam build map complete or are they adding more levels and areas before release?

Story I've seen is that it's "complete" and will just be balance/bug fixes until release now.

Pyros_sl said:

It's content complete. However as is typical with their new builds, there's a bunch of potential issues so unless you want to play it now, you might as well wait another couple of weeks for the hotfix patches. They'll do balancing passes and adding new items and stuff potentially until it's in a release state, planned release date is around february.

Click to expand...

It's on sale right now though

yeah, see I consider BNET and D2 online mp to be a key aspect of its success. I never had an offline char in D2 over level 10.