majestic

I'm pretty sure that he's got a special deal as small scale/indie developer.

There are two reasons for that - you essentially played a party of three and insane in IWD gives twice the experience that core rules/normal does. The doubled experience leads to the ridiculous situation where even a full party insane run becomes easier than a full party on core rules once you pass a certain point in the game which is roughly around the beginning of Dragon's Eye or thereabout. Now apply this to a single character hat is essentially half a full party and you've probably broken the game by the time you cleared out the yetis in the vale.

I just bought Grim Dawn on GOG even though I received a free key from a friend of mine who backed the game on Kickstarter on a high enough tier to get two keys. Why? Well, because I like GOG and I totally love Grim Dawn and feel like they deserve the money. Besides, 22€ for hundreds of hours of fun is a real killer offer.

Time to go farming that dynamite then.

Actually enemy damage on elite and ultimate was nerfed in the patch. Along with almost all defensive constellations and celestial powers that granted damage mitigation, resistances and pretty much everything health related. Devotions alone are no longer a viable replacement for a decent defensive concept and gear it would seem.

I generally think the best approach to the Devotion system is to simply use what makes sense for your character at the time as you'll be swimming in Aether Crystals before long. If you're looking for a more permanent setup try to balance a few defensive constellations - Dryad, Scales of Ulcama, Targo the Builder or The Behemoth are quite good regardless of your class and equipment - with some offensive ones that make sense for your playstyle, e.g. there's no reason to go for Solael's Witchblade for instance if you don't deal fire and chaos damage. There's another nifty thing that you need to keep in mind, constellations can be self-sustaining, which means you can remove prior constellations you needed to unlock or the crossroads points as long as you do not fall below the requirement for any constellations you spent points on. E.g. if you unlock the Jackal via the Crossroads point and complete it you will gain 3 Chaos Affinity. Now you have 4, so you can remove the crossroads point if you wanted. The Jackal constellation will then be considered self-sufficient.

Not to be picking nits but Sorcerer is what you get when you combine Demolitionist with Arcanist. Demo/Witch Hunter is Pyromancer.

I feel rainbow inside! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCxDJnHiLqs

So here's what Wikipedia says: Except of course this is how it is used in reality.

Wake me up when a real spoiler happens. /booksnob

Ah...I see they've brought back Iron Maiden, only new and improved. Improved indeed. A few hours ago I got myself killed by a set of unlikely coincidences. I noticed - in time, for a change - that a reflective hero spawn was right in the middle of the upcoming mob pack so I held off on dropping Devastation and carefully ran around it clearing the general area and picking off stragglers. At least, well, until one of them hit me, causing one of my proc-on-hit abilities to activate and jump widly around the group, causing the enemy furball to chase me. This alone wouldn't have been such a problem, but when the game decides to activate the Doombolt ability of my gloves (5% chance) and picks the hero spawn out of a large group of enemies as the target at just the right time... let's say that ability isn't called Doombolt for nothing. Looked pretty funny though, me running in front of that train dying instantly at full life.

I'm playing a Warlock at the moment and just finished Act 1 on Elite. She's a bit of a glass cannon because I neglected defensive skills so far, but every time I level up I just end up putting them somwhere to make more of the screen burn, flash and glow in all sorts of colours. But it really is fun and nothing beats dropping a Devastation on a bunch of enemies including hero spawns and watch them all die in 4 seconds. The only downside so far is gulping energy potions on cooldown during extended battles, but gear is going to fix that sooner or later. Oh, and reflective enemies. It's kind of easy to kill yourself. You can't cancel that aether comet shower once it is dropped.

Invoking Bruce. I'm betting he's standing in front of his mirror chanting ONE BRUCY VC, TWO BRUCY VC, err... uhm, like, right now.

Deathbringer Assault has a stun component and a 200 bonus piercing damage. It's not an instant death effect so there is no being immune to it as long as Sarevok can actually hit the enemy.

Druid isn't an available class in Grim Dawn. I'be only have about ten hours of playing time, but a Shaman is the closest thing I've seen(you can summon beasts to aid you). Druid is the hybrid class you get for selecting both the Shaman and Arcanist masteries. According to this post on the Grim Dawn forums Druids are quite capable of clearing Ultimate. I've just skimmed through it but it's apparently been updated for B30. The current build (B31) changed a few things - especially constellations and their bonuses - but generally that guide should get you started. It's a bit of a mess though, you need to scroll down a bit for a more concise version. Seems like a good choice for a starter character.

Gromnir is an interesting case also in the way it shows how access to Watcher's Keep gear and the raised experience cap make the game that much easier. The fight is really only an issue if you carry over a vanilla SoA party at the experience cap or when using the default party (I'm guessing here, I never used the pre-mades). I never played BG2 with SCS installed because it came out after I stopped playing. I did play the game on Insane with full Tactics and Improved Ilyich (back when they were two seperate mods, pfff, do I feel old now). Yeah, well, after Improved Ilyich you know enough cheese to make the other fights in the game utterly boring by comparison. Except maybe for Kuroisan the Cheesy and Ascension. All of which are mods though. So, time to stop thinking about it before I actually reinstall the game. Time for some more Grim Dawn.

Yeah, most likely... that is roasted pork and Eisbein usually refers to cured ham hock boiled long enough to make it "edible" - and I use edible very loosely here.

The annoying part was when our Obs guys here did their best to remove, redesign or nerf abilities that made trash battles take less micromanagement. The biggest offender of White March Part 2 was the change of spell mastery. It had absolutely no effect on the balance of the few major and really interesting fights because you can spend the spells only once per encounter anyway but for some for me utterly unfathomable reason it was deemed making trash battles to easy. It's hard to blame Obsidian for listening to the complaints on the forum though, but recent efforts have been a bis schizophrenic I think. First we get the Party AI that is supposed to lessen the micromanagement load and then we get a redesigned spell mastery so we get more micromanagement back. Yay... I guess. Also, I don't know, but Grom... I had more problems killing you in ToB than killing any of the dragons.

Sounds like the gameplay might be too vintage for you as well.

Curious... or not really: 44% Hitler, 0% fascist and 91% Sanders.

Yeah, get off my lawn, dammit! Not specifically meant as a direct answer: It's a matter of efficiency. It takes 10 seconds to read a stat priority list for e.g. a World of Warcraft spec while it definitely takes much longer on video even if there are bookmarks.

Oh well, I put the 18 bucks down for the early bird tier with only the game but I sure hope the humor in it turns out to be better than the somewhat boring video. The concept looks great, but I've always had a soft spot for side scrollers. Kinda grew up with them, although I'm sure that on lonely nights my parents still cry over the lost money that I "invested" at the arade.

I have that same beef with the ever more popular video guides for games. Sure a video guide is super useful for a jumping puzzle or some such, but why would I want to watch 45 minutes of hell where someone with an annoying, nasal voice tells me how to gear my toon and blabbles on endlessly? No thanks just give me an article to skim through, FFS.

Well, but there is a different term for using a game (engine) to tell a story: Machinima. I wouldn't count those as Let's Plays videos in the same way speedruns, reviews or dedicated video guides aren't. Or YouTube news coverage or commentary on games (I can heartly recommend "When Cheese Fails" for everyone who played a bit of Starcraft 2). Near as I can tell the HAR HAR goblin presentation is the core aspect of video LPs, which is why I don't like them, and most likely never will.

You actually liked Season 5?