I find Grim Dawn super boring, am I playing it wrong ?

[serville]

I played a total of about 12 hours maybe even more because offline, but I think the game is super boring. I tried to give it a lot of chances, but I end up going with a M1 spam build because skills are simply... not there? They have no feel nor impact, so I just take anything that make my M1 better and I hold left click then everything dies. I've literally one-shot bosses and I didn't know they were bosses most of the time. My highest-level character is about 30lv Shaman+Soldier and I used a big Two handed mace to bonk everybody. I would life steal my entire HP bar and barely take any damage because I wore heavy armor, my M1s Would do AOE and I cleared the screen every time without touching my keyboard. I've tried using skills and, skills in this game is drastically underwhelming and hard to obtain for example you have to first progress into the skill tree by wasting your skill points and THEN you can acquire couple of skills which means you have to get really high level for that to even happen. I see absoloutely no advantages of using skills instead of M1s when I can just clear the screen, be tanky and life steal all at the same time while doing ton of damage. I tried Arcanist+Demo with a gun, I basically ended up with the exact same build but now it was a 2H ranged gun instead of melee. I was less tanky and that was it. I really tried like trust me, I tried to freeze enemies because that lowered their fire resistance apparently so logically if I threw a fire grenade, they would take ton of damage then I did and.... nothing, they barely flinched. I just shot them with my empowered M1 and they got obliterated.

To give more context I've played a lot of PoE and I love that game. I love ARPGs but Grim Dawn just doesn't do it for some reason man, I'm sorry. In PoE, I could have ton of different skills with synergy even if they didn't relate and it would be fun. The game wouldn't be brain dead up until the end game and you always have a risk of dying but Grim Dawn is just too easy and I played in Normal difficulty. I don't want a fake difficulty scale of "oh just play at a higher difficulty" where it simply increases the stats of enemies to be tankier and deal more damage :/

The main issue is still there, skill system feels like recoloration of the same skills over and over with barely anything interesting. Your skills bar will be empty majority of the early game. I would like to tell you something funny which is this gem kind of items that you attach to your weapons, and they give you skills and stat boost: I put one that gave me a lightning AoE, and it was straight-out better than any skills or skill combo I could ever do, I just spammed that lightning shockwave and I would wipe the screen.

Why a random gem I found on the ground gives me a better SPAMAMBLE skill that is so much better than what I can have throughout the skill tree system. I could probably play the game without even giving skill points for a very long time.

This game just made me miss PoE.

[JCourtney]

PoE doesn't have any combat though. You just explode the screen and get RSI from 1,000 clicks per second.

[madrigal]

Sure, at level 30 you can stand there forever and spam your puny lightning nova and eventually everything will go down. That's really boring.
Or you can one-shot the entire screen with Primal Strike and the game looks just like PoE.

[serville]

Originally posted by JCourtney:

PoE doesn't have any combat though. You just explode the screen and get RSI from 1,000 clicks per second.

That is exactly what I'm living in Grim Dawn, what do you mean. And to make it worse that is happening in early game, it's just a horrible newbie experience. For PoE to get to that point you have to put in a lot of hours into the game it easily takes 10-15+ Hours for that.

[serville]

Originally posted by madrigal:

Sure, at level 30 you can stand there forever and spam your puny lightning nova and eventually everything will go down. That's really boring.
Or you can one-shot the entire screen with Primal Strike and the game looks just like PoE.

If it's my fault that I'm making the game boring, I think that's a design flaw. I don't encounter this in other games. Even so at least it takes a lot more work than just dragging a shiny stone on top of a weapon to unlock an ability.

[anachoret]

Truly, one of the great mouse-clickers of our time.

[OpenSheep]

I was having trouble enjoying the game until I got a class combo that was fun for me demo+oathkeeper. Also the game really starts on elite mode

[CRCGamer]

There are a few item granted skills that exist to carry early game builds to around level 20 where they can actually start building into their actual damage skills fully. Caster builds often rely on rotating between 2-3 skills and looking for CDR on gear and attaching devotions to skills at which point you can slap half the screen with an AoE and then have meteors or a blizzard from devotions following up to finish the job.

Basic auto-attack enhancement builds are stupid simple and don't face plant into problems until you start getting to the mid-game difficulty jump where a number of bosses punish mindless melee game play. And frankly normal mode is *easy* because it exists in a state where new players can finish the campaign for the story. The actual challenge starts kicking in fully once you are in elite and ultimate difficulty and have access to all your gear modifications at level 70+ from faction vendors. There are plenty of actual challenges to face, they are simply locked behind hidden areas or at higher difficulties where you get punished for lacking resist coverage or failing to respect tells.

[WallaceTheSane]

It starts out slow, as do most ARPG's. You aren't playing it wrong by any means. It takes a while to get to a comfortable place that feels good if you're new.

[CynicDragon]

your playing it correctly when the enemies are dangerous enough to make your heart beat fast

[Enerril]

I had somewhat alike first experience of grim dawn.
Played coop 2 soldiers with forcewaves and finished normal non-dlc content under some hours. And that was before normal difficulty got buffed. Felt too easy and boring. Abandoned for some time. Later by chance started playing again, and what caught me is lore notes. Stories and quests and dialogues are well-written so it carried me for some time finishing ultimate with different characters to get all lore.
By the end of it I was completely hooked with testing out builds so this is how my 1k hour road started.
Back then people often said that game really starts at level 94

[Zantai]

The game's difficulty on normal is tuned to match the needs of the player base. This is literally why Veteran difficulty exists. It provides a more meaningful early challenge for those that want it.

It's not some "fake" difficulty. It has more challenging monster spawns and it drops better loot, on top of an XP bonus. Also, once you reach Ultimate difficulty with the Forgotten Gods expansion, you can even transfer merits to your alts, enabling you to immediately start on Elite or Ultimate difficulty on new characters, which is an even greater starting challenge for even greater rewards.

If you find the easiest difficulty that easy at what are essentially the tutorial levels, then I recommend embracing your veteran spirit and playing on veteran.

P.S. I don't mean to throw shade but if you don't have a similar experience leveling up in PoE, you might be playing PoE wrong... it's frankly quite easy to wipe monsters and bosses out during the leveling portion in that game. And there's nothing really wrong with that. GGG wants you to feel a rush of power while you get to the endgame (the meat of the game) quickly. Experienced players get to endgame in ~4 hours in PoE.

[Imniscor]

I agree with the OP.
The skills are just reskins of one another (nova type skill, ray type skill, meteor type skill, aura type skill, curse type skill, ground effect type skill, etc.).
Yes, skills have no oomph. It does not really matter how you kill enemies, it all feels the same.
There is no need at all to learn multiple skills.
Just max 1 skill and click with it throughout the whole game, brain dead.
I know some other games are like that too (POE...) but just because some are it does not mean this game should be too.
Inquisitor Martyr makes you use all your skills (though that game has other problems like low number of skills and skills are tied to gear).

Itemization is bad.
Items have too many useless stats.
Why would I want physical, acid, fire and whatever damage in my weapon if I am using a Cold build?
Classes dont really mix well to justify multiclass.

The star chart system is a creative system but the effects/passives that it gives are mostly bad gimmicks that trigger in a chance.

The skill effects, character animations, are bad.
The player character is fat, using oversized weapons that are not proportional to his size, like a LEGO character who seems to be floating instead of walking/running on top of the floor because his steps are not synced to relative distance that it would be supposed to walk.

The only thing this game has going for it is the open world, that only Diablo 4 has, but Grim Dawn's open world is better.

Oh and I played this game on ultimate and have a little over 1000 hours.

[Safarel]

Originally posted by Imniscor:

Inquisitor Martyr makes you use all your skills (though that game has other problems like low number of skills and skills are tied to gear).

Except that fact that 99% of playtime in martyr you use... literally zero skills, just running with fire aura from techno prayer and - boom - whole screen are just exploded

In rare occasions that enemy doesn't die from trillion debuffs that trigger fire aura you are used... wow, one skill you mained, like gd, poe and any other aRPG

[Lunitari]

Originally posted by Imniscor:

I agree with the OP.
The skills are just reskins of one another (nova type skill, ray type skill, meteor type skill, aura type skill, curse type skill, ground effect type skill, etc.).
Yes, skills have no oomph. It does not really matter how you kill enemies, it all feels the same.
There is no need at all to learn multiple skills.
Just max 1 skill and click with it throughout the whole game, brain dead.
I know some other games are like that too (POE...) but just because some are it does not mean this game should be too.
Inquisitor Martyr makes you use all your skills (though that game has other problems like low number of skills and skills are tied to gear).

Itemization is bad.
Items have too many useless stats.
Why would I want physical, acid, fire and whatever damage in my weapon if I am using a Cold build?
Classes dont really mix well to justify multiclass.

The star chart system is a creative system but the effects/passives that it gives are mostly bad gimmicks that trigger in a chance.

The skill effects, character animations, are bad.
The player character is fat, using oversized weapons that are not proportional to his size, like a LEGO character who seems to be floating instead of walking/running on top of the floor because his steps are not synced to relative distance that it would be supposed to walk.

The only thing this game has going for it is the open world, that only Diablo 4 has, but Grim Dawn's open world is better.

Oh and I played this game on ultimate and have a little over 1000 hours.

What a terrible take. I can only hope you are a troll and not this dumb

[Chan]

Well if it's so easy just make a hardcore character and play up to ultimate. If you're looking for a challenge upping the ante is the way to go. Also normal difficulty is essentially training wheels to get you started. The game opens up once you get into higher difficulties.