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[Grim Dawn] Somehow even grimmer
darklite_x
I'm not an r-tard...Registered User regular
I'm not an r-tard...Registered User regular
Grim Dawn is an upcoming Action RPG along the lines of Diablo and Titan Quest. Grim Dawn is being created by Crate Entertainment, which consists of many members from the now-defunct Iron Lore Studio. I'm no good with words though, so I'll just paste the about section from their website:
Grim Dawn is an action role-playing game intended for digital distribution on the PC. It is being developed by veterans of Iron Lore entertainment, the makers of Titan Quest. Grim Dawn is being built with Crate's own improved version of the Iron Lore engine and toolset; the same technology used to create Titan Quest. As a spiritual successor, Grim Dawn will attempt to better perfect the magical formula of exploration, character advancement, and loot collection pioneered by Diablo.
Players will be thrust into the dark, war-torn world of Cairn where a once proud empire has been brought to ruin and the human race driven to the edge of extinction. Cairn has become ground zero of an eternal war between two otherworldly powers, one seeking to use human bodies as a resource, the other intent upon destroying the human race before that can happen. This cataclysmic war has not only decimated human civilization but is warping the very fabric of reality and, in its wake, giving life to new horrors.
For humankind it is the dawn of a grim new age where iron has replaced gold as currency and the importance of salt as a weapon makes it far too valuable to waste on food. Small enclaves of human survivors exist scattered throughout the world, holed up in hidden refuges. These humans have quietly watched the warring invaders destroy one another and have become wise to the strengths and vulnerabilities of their otherworldly foes. A few survivors have begun to exhibit strange new abilities after surviving possession or exposure to the warp. These unnatural powers are feared by some but give many new hope of launching a resistance to fight the "outsiders" and reclaim what's left of their world.
Grim Dawn is a steampunk/horror styled ARPG acting as the spiritual successor to the amazing Titan Quest. The game promises to be an even better experience than Titan Quest. Here are some of the expected features:
- Combine any of five distinct skill classes each with multiple skill trees in which to specialize. Advance your class mastery up to 75 levels to unlock dozens of powerful skills and synergistic modifiers. New classes will be periodically released through downloadable content.
- Destructible environments give evidence of your massive battles while collapsing stonework and flying shards of furniture can be used tactically to cause further injury to your foes.
- Dynamic Weather brings the world to life with region-specific climates and a variety of weather effects. A sunny day can cloud over with mild rainshowers that builds into a booming thunderstorm. Variable wind gusts blow grass and affect objects like windmills and window shutters.
- Gameplay systems designed to expand for 200 levels of character progression, equipment, and enemies to fight makes for ridiculous amounts of replay value.
- Connect with old friends or make new allies in glorious multiplayer. Specially balanced multiplayer encounters will put your teamwork to the ultimate challenge.
- Collect blueprints that allow you to combine salvaged components into unique crafted items and then, later, use those basic crafted items with higher-tiered recipes to complete items of unprecedented badassness.
- Camera rotation enhances the three-dimensionality of the world and gameplay while levels are still designed so that players are not forced to rotate the camera.
- Refined loot system drops less junk items and ensures more consistent rewards from hero and boss monsters.
- Satisfying enemy damage and death effects with an option to enable blood and gore.
- New quest and conversation system will allow players to choose quest paths and rewards, interact with NPCs in more interesting ways, and an intuitive quest creation wizard will make life a lot easier for modders.
- An NPC faction system lets the player improve their relations with different NPC groups to earn rewards as their favor increases such as merchant discounts, new items, and additional quest lines. However, aiding one faction could turn a rival faction into your enemy. Choose which side you will support!
- The ability to spend money to reclaim skill and attribute points alleviates the fear and frustration of having to make early, uninformed decisions that could permanently nerf a character.
- More features are in the works and will be announced as Grim Dawn nears release.
Do you see that shit right there? AWESOME!
CLASSES/MASTERIES
Currently there are 5 planned classes for the game, or rather masteries. These will work similar to Titan Quest in that you will start off with one mastery and have the option to spend points in another later on. I'll be honest here, the website says 5 masteries, and so does the wiki, but the wiki also lists 'vigilante' and I can't really tell whether or not Crate decided to add another mastery or if vigilante is just the name given when you spec into two specific masteries. Most likely the latter.
Soldier
A soldier excels in the thick of it. He charges into battle and unleashes crushing might upon his foes. One man and many monsters may enter; but only one man and some bloody smears will leave. Soldiers excel with melee weapons, but are not restricted to them. Most of his skills do not carry any weapon requirements at all.
Demolitionist
A Demolitionist excels at range, hurling powerful explosives and debilitating charges. A Demolitionist thrives when everything is either burning, exploding, or somewhere in-between. None of the Demolitionist’s skills are weapon dependent, so both melee and ranged builds can be made viable.
Nightblade
Nightblades are deadly melee fighters and assassins. Unlike the Soldier, a Nightblade approaches combat with the intent of ending it quickly and decisively. Prolonged encounters can be dangerous, but the Nightblade is not without his illusions and tricks. Using conjured illusions that seem so real that they can inflict actual physical harm, these highly skilled combatants can fight their way out of nearly any situation. While Nightblades are not restricted to any particular weapon type, they excel when dual wielding swords and fading in and out of melee combat with their adversaries.
Occultist
Occultists are masters of the eldritch powers, terrible and devastating. Occultists destroy their enemies with debilitating curses and forbidden magic. When that is not enough, they can summon powerful beings to aid them in battle. As with the Demolitionist, none of the Occultist skills are dependent on weapons, so you are not restricted to a ranged or melee build. Both are viable.
Arcanist
Under Development
Currently all classes but the Arcanist are playable in the alpha.
SCREENSHOTS
Character creation/gameplay video (thanks to Archsorcerer for pointing it out):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6ktcmciBgUseful Links (and where I've shamelessly taken all info and pics from):
Grim Dawn Main Site
Grim Dawn Wiki
GrimCalc Build Calculator (think TitanCalc)
Latest Update:
Arise, dead thread, for the Necromancer (and Inquisitor) are upon us!
Ashes of Malmouth, the Grim Dawn expansion is coming next month!https://youtu.be/oz2Z6hN5YBs
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
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Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
All of that said, it's still in alpha, and from what I've seen so far, I've got high hopes for this game. As it stands, Titan Quest is still a superior game, mostly due to the polish. The actual mechanics seem fairly solid, and as far as stats/items/skills, it all seems very reminiscent of Titan Quest. I think the game could definitely use some UI improvements, but from a 6 man team it has a lot of potential. For an alpha build, what I've played so far is very promising.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
edit: Actually, just hopped on it. What the hell, haven't bought a game in a good while, and Path of Exile is off-limits until I find a better Internet situation.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I didn't mean to imply that it was a total bugfest, just that, next to Titan Quest it seems like it could still use some work. I totally agree that for a game that's only in alpha stage I don't think I'd feel ripped off if I paid for this as a finished product. I'm not sure why, but for some reason TQ just seems a lot more polished. I think a big part of it may have to do with the art direction they've taken with this particular game. The colors aren't as bright as TQ, and I think as a result it makes the whole world kind of blend together a bit. It also needs some work on the targetting system. Other than that, it's an AMAZING effort from 6 people. I only just recently learned how small the development team was and I gotta say it's quite impressive what they've been able to do.
Also, thanks for the video link, Arch. Added to the OP.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
edit: doesn't alt+tab well :P
edit: crash to desktop near end of the first dungeon, but at least the bug reporter caught it. So far I'm kinda in love -- they've also made combat more lethal while dramatically upping out-of-combat regen, so the game doesn't have TQ's slow war of attrition feel to it. Kinda hinges on how rare potions are, though.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
On the other hand, I think the definition of "out of combat" may be too generous to the player.
I haven't got very far yet -- have a low-level Soldier and a low-level Occultist. Not really sure how I'd build Occultist -- the eye nuke doesn't seem very good in its first tier. Maybe melee with pets, the lifesteal sigil, and the acid blood self-buff.
Is it design boring or do they just need to balance things more?
I've only played a few levels of the Soldier and Occultist, so I can't speak for balance too well, but they weren't exciting me on a design level. The Soldier's skill tree mostly consists of passives and buffs rather than visually exciting active abilities. The Occultist is mostly about pets and hexes that debuff or sap an enemy's life force. Its primary attack spell is an eye that's thrown at enemies. Part of what I enjoy about action RPGs is spectacle and instant gratification, and the Occultist doesn't seem to have that. The Demolitionist, on the other hand, has shrapnel that stuns enemies, molotov cocktails that burn them, grenades, mortar traps, cluster bombs, a passive that replaces the default attack with one that causes fiery explosions, and so forth. The Soldier and the Occultist are not only harder to play due to less crowd control options and how hard hitting and numerous the mobs are, but just aren't as exciting from an ability and visual perspective, as well.
But those are only my initial impressions of those classes and browsing through their skill trees. They could become better later in the game. At least in the early game, however, the Demolitionist feels like the obvious choice, choosing one of the others as a support capacity once reaching level 10.
Well, it looks like they improved its armor-melting improvement? My guess is it's one of those skills that falls behind at higher levels, so in the end-game you'll be using it more to support another fire-physical workhouse. Titan Quest had several skills like this -- an early maxed Ring of Fire melted everything in Normal, but became much less impressive later on.
Act 2 went live this morning! The patch also came with some ability tweaks (including a new ability for Nightblade), some UI changes, and an increased LV cap. Looking forward to trying it out.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
So is the game still considered to be in alpha? Or has it moved to beta?
But did they really, really have to bring back TQ skill system and mechanics? That was the one awful thing about the game. Like, when I played TQ I read through a horribly long mechanics thread just to figure out how the skills actually work. The damage types, like fire/burning, frost/frostburn being different and affected by different modifiers that may or may not actually exist on gear. It's all here, apparently. Even the generic 'elemental damage'. Shitload of different damage types that may or may not scale with gear/stats. Eh :P
I agree. I think a lot of people in this genre like that kind of thing -- see Path of Exile, see also the backlash against D3's simplified loots.
Played as demolitionist with Fire Strike to 20ish, Occultist to 28. On occultist I just spammed Dreeg's Evil Eye (green magic missile), which got kind of tedious towards the end. It's pretty much what I remember from TQ skill system: finish normal difficulty using like one or two skills, by the third difficulty you may actually have multiple skills to use.
The out of combat regeneration is so exploitable, together with most of the mobs being leashed to a location. And most of the mobs being incapable of hitting the player as long as you keep running. Low on health? Run in circles for a few seconds, back to full health. It's not exactly healthy gameplay, so I hope they'll manage to solve that somehow :P
Pretty much all projectiles having collision with each other is kind of silly. Like.. demonic magic is apparently countered by shooting at it. Multiple crossbow skeletons or whatever can be tricky to hit from range, since they'll just shoot the projectiles down.
Apparently all damage types should scale with cunning or spirit now unlike in TQ, which is nice. Still, I'm not sure why there has to be so many damage types. There's (at least) physical, fire (+burn), cold (+cold burn), electricity +electrical burn), poison (+acid) , piercing, bleeding, vitality, aether, chaos and internal trauma. Also generic elemental damage. It's sort of difficult to benefit from dual class when there's so many damage types, barring some low mastery utility skills.
Think I'll roll a nightblade and play with melee a bit more. Got quite a few uniques for a melee character in stash too.
I plan to pick up my GD play through back up after I am finished with FO4......
....in 2020.