Grim Dawn is one of the most anticipated ARPG title currently under development by Crate Entertainment. After licensing the Titan Quest engine back in 2009, the game quickly went into development the following year. Grim Dawn had a huge success in Kickstarter and it transitioned into alpha via Steam's early access program in 2013.
For this particular session, we're using build number 26, which was released last June. The degree of which you can customize your character, in terms of skills and gameplay, is as deep as the Diablo 2 experience. We've experimented on several class combinations and decided to build a pure Occultist character that requires the least amount of effort to level up. In a span of eight hours, we managed to reach level 30 with only a total damage of 234 dealt to the enemy.
Taking inspiration from D2's necromancer class, we figured that the quickest way to beat the game is let it beat itself. The Occultist's hellhound skill is both fast and ferocious, often needing only one hit to down regular mobs on its own. For the first four levels of the game, we devoted all of our skill points to raising the class level. Once the hellhound skill is usable, the game pretty much takes care of itself.
To compensate for our Occultist's lack of direct combat, we've devoted our character points to the Physique attribute so we can wear better armor and have better survivability when mobs stray too close. We've also leveled up our raven (Summon familiar) with the Mend flesh ability once we've maxed out the Hellhound.
One of the flaws we've discovered (and exploited), is the first hit aggro that the enemy AI seem to operate on. Since the hellhound automatically attacks anything in its range, our character can literally stand in the middle of the fray without being noticed. Think Brad Pitt injected with a virus in World War Z. We've also learned that only bosses go directly for the Occultist itself and is often distracted by the Hellhound and the Familiar's attacks to fully take advantage of our weakness.
We've barely scratched the surface of this game and to be honest, we've spent more time tweaking and rebuilding the character more than the actual gameplay. We would post a more detailed description of this build in the official site's forum when we've maxed out the level and find the coolest equipment possible. We would like to hear from you if you have any suggestions. Please leave us a message in our comments section!
