Grim Dawn

It's still my top Steam game right now, at 954 hours. Factorio will pass it soon since I've been playing that recently and it's only 30 hours behind, but it is definitely in my top 5 games all time.

I tried it a few years ago. Seemed okay but for some reason got stuck on what appeared to be a small thing. Anyway I guess I'll reisntall and see if my character and hangup is deleted so I can start new.

I have a few hours in this game. It was fun, don't remember why I stopped playing. I'll have to check it out again.

Guess I know my playstyle. Hadn't picked up the game in six years and picked Shaman and Soldier as my masteries. Out of curiosity, I found my old GD saves and my first character had the same two masteries, heh.

Going 2H is a bit unusual for me in general, though. I usually am sword and board (even was in Elden Ring). Even on Normal/Veteran I feel a bit squishy so I hope I'm not going to regret that. I'm not sure I want to kite everything difficult going forward.

Holy fuck the Candle District in Malmouth, great xp and all but doing the quests in that monstrosity is really something.

I always get stuck in the second act and can't figure out how to progress.

Bandwagon said:

That's exactly where I'm at right now and I can't figure out where the fuck I'm supposed to go

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I think the plan is clear the zone, turn in the quests, start a new game, re-clear the zone and look for the stuff in the follow ups

I'm not following any builds or guides. Just winging it on veteran mode. Started as Shaman and thinking of Demolitionist at level 10. Hope fire and lightning damage gets me through this game!

My first character was a dual wield Blademaster. It's really fun playing through the first time and getting stomped by various things. I quickly learned that my character wasn't very good for farming end game but that's part of the journey!

Feeling kind of bummed by my build lately. I went pretty hard on a 2H build and I'm definitely struggling with the highest tier bosses (normal/veteran). I usually end up just kiting them with non 2H skills. Meanwhile, I basically melt everything else, so it's a weird experience. Looking ahead, doing elite and ultimate with that kind of build seems like rough going. Plus, I'm not sure 2H weapons actually get double stats so I'd be missing out on a place to get extra resistances.

Anyone else play a 2H build in Ultimate and feel like you're not too squishy and actually using the 2H aspect to the fullest?

I did 2h shaman/night blade and had to stick and move a bit using shadow strike and the invuln/retaliation a bit on the ultra heavies until end game when I had crazy leech/mit

Talos said:

I'm not following any builds or guides. Just winging it on veteran mode. Started as Shaman and thinking of Demolitionist at level 10. Hope fire and lightning damage gets me through this game!

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Stay shaman and dump all your points into the mosquito swarm thing, will carry you through all of the first difficulty and you can play with any other skills really.

Been playing this game a lot lately and had a lot of fun but after a while was reminded of why I stopped playing last back in 2016. It's very much a MMO level grind when you get to the high end. Farming components for other components, augments, relics, keys, and other shit is very time consuming for what you get. If you want to farm Legendaries and avoid duplicates, you pretty much have to leave your game open for days/weeks (much greater chance of not getting a duplicate roll when your session hasn't been restarted). Some of the legendaries can drastically alter a build so without them you're much more constrained. Leveling alts with merits and GD Item Assistant was a lot easier, but there's still only so many times you can speed run the story missions.

I just don't think I have a 1000-2000 hour game play in me anymore.

My favorite playthroughs ended up being a Warder (switched his focus a few times, from Physical to Lightning to Vitality, but still never got the Avenger's Crusher). Also, for leveling without great gear, a Conjuror full pet build was pretty amazing and melted things though it was tough to keep my resistances up without gimping my pets.

Hateyou said:

I think expecting 1-2k hours from any static game is nuts. I have put 600 into GD but it has taken a decade to accumulate that much.

I know there are exceptions for things like MMOs and games that do season refreshes but GD was never that game.

Edit: Oh that reminds me...update on my buddy...

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It's not about me expecting 1-2k hours from the game, but that the top end grind is more typical to a MMO type game than a single player mostly static game. I'd greatly prefer if the grind wasn't so heavy, especially for a game that doesn't have a new content pipeline.

I mean, yeah, you don't have to, but if you actually want to "max" a character, it's a large time investment. If you want to try more than one class at top power? Then yeah it's MMO levels.

I can't imagine how terrible it would be without something like GD Item Assistant. Even with all the playing I've done, I still only have 120ish Legendaries. There's nearly 900 Epics and Legendaries for endgame levels in the full game. And that doesn't even get into stuff like rare components which are probably even worse to farm.