Grim Dawn - 11 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner

Here's 10 (+1) tips and tricks on how to have a great time in Grim Dawn, it might be the end of the world but you can still enjoy the apocalypse.

Grim Dawn is a classic ARPG inspired by Titan Quest, it's less like Path of Exile or Torchlight Infinite and more like Diablo 2,

#Grimdawn #tipsandtricks #arpg

[dangerousdays]

I've played Grim Dawn for over 2000 hours and I have never rotated my camera. And never will. Static camera 4 Lyfe! 🤘🤘

[travissullivan]

Special mats note: From act 2 (and act 7) the blacksmith can craft dynamite, 3 per large crystal. Craft as many as you can spare, and if you are running out of scrap, don't sell your blue items, instead, go to the act 1 component girl and have her blow your items up. They always give you scrap and a bonus. For blues, this bonus is usually a component, but sometimes it will be a rare crafting material.

[bregonwebb]

for newer people watching this... don't wait till a higher difficulty to obtain your devotions. in over half the builds in the game you will screw yourself over on survivability or damage depending on the class. you can always respect devotions and skill points. don't be afraid to experiment along the way, you'll make the bits back just fine.

[billwrosch]

My two biggest tips for early game:
Don't be afraid to use components and augments on gear to help cap resistances. I always recommend new players to focus on levelling up the early game factions: devils crossing, rovers, legion, homestead as soon as you can by taking bounties for them, as the gear and augments they sell can be really powerful at low levels.
Secondly "monster infrequents" (green rarity items with specific skill bonuses) can be target farmed as soon as you have access to that enemy type. Monster infrequents are sometimes powerful enough to build around and can roll a prefix and suffix modifier, so it can be worth farming for a well rolled one.

[travissullivan]

So, I think I'm just over 2.5k hours in grimdawn, and my favorite part is figuring out builds and trying to get new ones to work.

My biggest tip is to use Grim Tools, kind of like PoB or Maxroll planner, but not really to plan out your build (which I love doing, but it's not a requirement like it is in PoE), but just to look at the end game sets and items, as well as the MIs (monster specific drop green items).

It has a section in the items that shows you all the items that affect a specific skill and wear to farm them. So, if you have a skill you like, then go there, click on that skill and look at all the items that buff it.

Also, iron at first is hard to come by, but it rains later on, and the cost of respecing starts out low, so don't worry so much about your skills. Try one pointing different ones at the start to see which one mechanically fits your playstyle, then go back and respec those points and dump them into one skill. Always at least put 1 point in the mastery bar every level until you reach 50 points, but I'd avoid taking a second class until after level 50.

Also, on your first playthrough, try to reach Elite as soon as possible. It unlocks after act 4, and it's not so difficult once your character is in at least decent shape. (the opposite is true for ultimate. Stay in Elite as long as you need to, finishing pretty much everything because ultimate isn't forgiving) Push through to act 6 in elite and sit on the malmouth bounty board in elite until you reach revered (max rep), which unlocks xp potions that you can use for fresh characters and the rest of this character's journey.

Turn off white items when the game starts and turn off yellow items as soon as you have replaced your chest and pants.

Go jackal first for devotions on every playthrough. 1 red plus 3 red to get to it. This gives you 6% action speed (attack, cast and movement) as well as 2% physical resistance (which is nearly impossible to cap). I'd also recommend Dryad and turtle because they give you a heal when you use a skill and a shield when you drop low on life, respectively. From there, look at the damage type you are doing, then progress to the T2 devotions (these are the devotions that have decent requirements, but not too large, but they still give colors) looking for the one that reduces resistances for the type of damage you are doing. Like in most ARPGs RR (resistance reduction) is a massive boost to your damage.

1 point all auras in your class at first, then add points later once your main skill is filled out.

max out buffs as quickly as you can.

Soldier is the easiest class to level with forcewave and blitz and all of its passive bonuses.

Oathkeeper is one of the fastest classes to level with vire's might fire trail and guardians.

Use your components. You will get tons of them, so just use them, especially the ones on your weapon that give you an attack. If you want to focus on spending your points on buffs, you can use weapon components up until lvl 20 and they work really well. At lvl 20, you have to craft an upgraded version of said component. You can also craft components for your armor that are upgrades that will fill out your resistances. Anti-venom salve is a godsend early on giving your poison res and armor.

Armor is based on gear slot and enemy chance to hit said gear slot (head, chest, legs, hands, feet and shoulders) The armor those pieces give is local. Armor on belt, jewelry and skills is global, and because of that, it's very valuable.

Of all the ARPGs, Grim Dawn has some of the beast gearing. Better than poe, better than TLI, better than LE. The MIs give so much variety and crazy class changing abilities, thus why I recommend checking out grimtools.

[ijcunningham]

There is an auto loot option in the settings, it picks up all components, scap, dynamite etc without having to keep clicking on them all. It doesn't pick up items though so you are free to pick whichever of them up that you want. Small but great quality of life thing :)

[travissullivan]

A note about second class: I'd recommend against picking a second class until after level 50. Focus on the main skill, buff skills and auras. Go with the 2-1 approach until you have 50 points into the mastery bar (every level put at least 1 point in the mastery bar, pushing it as high as possible. Some levels, it is best to do more in the mastery bar)

[americatheuneducated]

Turn on auto pick up materials slide the distance to max. it will only pick up components and food/essences.
Set a key bind to pick-up items this is for everything else.
The bank, the merchants, the devotion tree, all have search bars to help make your decisions easier and faster to find.
Try to go for one damage type is best with conversions to that type, 2 damage types is still great, 3 is fine if it is elemental damage (Fire, Cold, Lightning), anything else is going to cripple you.
Every item accept for relics can have 1 component and one augment added to it....augments are bought from faction vendors with high faction rating.
There are a lot of Black smiths and they all have 1 of 3 bonuses they can add to gear you craft with them....hover over the circle symbol next to the combine button on the bottom to see them. ((I believe wiki has the list of them and their bonuses))
Do not ignore the apprentice as he can remove components and augments to change as you find new gear to make up what the component/augment was doing.
DO not worry about gear so much your first play there is a ton.... and near impossible to get everything your looking for, the game can be beat with all rare (green gear) only....yes that goes for ultimate as well.
Your goal with the first character is to have fun explore for secret areas and try to be friends with all the factions you out the good factions to max and buy the mandates ( it gives +150% experience with faction) to pass on to the next character, so it is easier for you the next time you play.

Always keep scrap (as you will always be finding it everywhere), dynamite (because you never know), and potions for what your lacking or a damage boost on hand.
Stick all components in the shared bank as the blacksmith and devotions shrines will pull from it....NO need to carry it all around with you.

Buy the DLC's if you enjoy the game the quality of life changes and addition to the game will make everything easier for your next play
Like buying a item to pass on that open all the ability to pass on money through shared transmute ability for the apprentice that lets you change a set item into another piece of the same set. Additional items, quests, hidden quests and bosses, also raising your level cap, the amount of skill points, devotions, and attributes.

[isaacgorski]

When i realized that devotions can be bound to your summons, that changed the game for me

[Tyrnorog]

iv played for 1500 hours and my bigest tip would be to pay attention to the map things are always popping up, secret nooks and cranys that have insan loot

[travissullivan]

My suggestion for progressing through the game: Elite and Ultimate unlock after act 4 (the big tentacle boss). I suggest entering elite as soon as you reach the first act 5 hub, just to unlock the rep, though it's not necessary. In elite and ultimate, you get so much more xp and rep that a play through on normal isn't very helpful. I would recommend a full clear on Elite, however, because Ultimate requires your build to be somewhat complete or else you will die a lot and not kill enough. The difference between elite and ultimate is far greater than the difference between normal and elite, and the monsters fully scale to your level.

Also, all the shrines are always in the same location, and your cap is 55 points, no mater how many shrines you get.

Edit to add: Do not do extra quests for factions in normal. It is a complete waste of time. It's not really even worth to do it in Elite.

[VBplays]

Potions are available in game from the very beginning, on a cool down just like D3, D4 and PoE

[travissullivan]

For all new players, I'd recommend CrabTurtle's BattleMage, physical dot character. It's super tanky and does insane damage with decent mobility and great utility. It levels pretty easily with 2h spam forcewave, which is used to farm totems super easily until it can get the gear to swap to IT (which is what the physical dot is refereed to)

[travissullivan]

Something I wish I'd known sooner is that in Act 6 (the city aka malmouth) you can get to max rep really quickly in elite, and you can buy xp potions from that vendor, so when you go into ultimate or elite act 7, you can use an xp potion to give you double xp the rest of the way. (xp potions and the lokkar set are how people do a 5-hour 1-94 play through)

Also, the blacksmith collects blueprints, and the best way to farm blueprints is from the totems. These blueprints include helmet blueprints, which are how most people get end-game sets. You make 4 helmets, then your transmute the three bad ones into other pieces of the set with the inventor (act 1 component girl who also does the blowing gear up)

[Draliseth]

The biggest tip I have is for fellow Xbox scrubs: whatever you assign to the A button is considered your default attack. Anything that says it buffs and procw off your default attack refers to weapon attacks/skills assigned to that button unless otherwise noted (i.e. Primal Strike for Shaman, which also had me under the impression that default attack meant the default weapon attack).

Second: shrines give you devotion points and you can respec them with the spirit guide as easily as your skills with a minor extra cost. They can heavily modify your character passives and skills. Don't write it off as scary end game nerd stuff.

Third: What happens in hardcore stays in hardcore. Transmog styles, stash items (even if in the "shared" tab), it all stays separate from regular/softcore mode and you cannot turn it off like Veteran difficulty.

Fourth: Don't get carried away with respeccing your skills. If you keep changing them like trying on different outfits in a montage you won't be able to reassign them when you need to later.

[manub]

Hi, just wanted to say your tip on putting a lot of points leveling your class helped me A LOT today. I just began GD a few days ago and didn't fully understand why my stats were that bad. I just overlooked the bonus stats on class levels ... so thanks for the advice.
And my personal tip that I personnally still struggle to apply: lay portals regularly, before a dungeon, before a new portion of the map, before a boss, etc. You never know what's gonna kill you in the near future, so make your way back to action faster.

[isaacgorski]

My biggest tip for starting. Learn the mechanics and how damage works on a tanky character. Then once you figure out that, go into a character that you really want to focus on a specific damage type. If you start multiple characters, you'll constantly find gear that works perfect for your 20 other characters with different specializations. I cant play a character now for an hour without wanting to swap to another and try a new item lol

[Shaderyus]

If you enjoy the base game and like building up to max level, there's a ton that you can do with conversions and item support, even if a certain class doesn't start with that specific damage type. It should be noted, however, that conversion doesn't affect a certain stat twice like in PoE - meaning that if you phys converted to acid and flat phys + % phys damage on your gear, all %phys bonuses are lost and only the flat numbers are converted and used.
Most builds are viable if you can survive the early game pressure. Even a single pet can have a lot of general bonuses and work well on a summoner based build, and items can have summons, it's hard to keep up with what item does what but you get used to a certain leveling path.
If you like extra mastery combinations or just general better qol/difficulty level control, I absolutely recommend adding a mod like Grimarillion or Dawn of Masteries. Not only do they add class combos inspired by Diablo 2/3 characters (among other themes), you can increase monster density, extra hero mobs, they scale better with your level and the shattered realm offers a ton of hard bosses to limit test your builds.
Overall, I enjoy this game in similar fashion to PoE for the build complexity, but tend to prefer the more laid back, zero pressure progression and switch characters without feeling I'm "losing" out on the challenge aspect.

[jzy_]

I came from Path of Exile to Grim Dawn. Mostly because I am still waiting for POE 2 bc POE has become a little stale for me. I started GD on veteran with an inquisitor and would spend like 20 minutes a fight. Thank you for explaining that veteran ain’t worth it. Last thing is constellations. They are so confusing to me considering I don’t know what stats or abilities are good for different classes 😅

[danielsimandjuntak]

I benefitted a lot by prioritizing devotions skills that shred enemies' resistances to my character's main damage type.