1. Best Defensive Constellations Grim Dawn

This guide outlines all the constellations in the game, including all the stats each one of them gives. I have only included stats from the first level of each proc so you get the gist of what they do, also the flat damage numbers arent 100% accurate since they scale off player damage bonuses.

In this article, I will be taking a look at Grim Dawn, the versatile ARPG which was developed by Crate Entertainment. Is it worth your time? Read on to find out.

Are things looking pretty grim for Grim Dawn?

Early access is becoming a trend, with many RPG games going through the cycle of development with the audience. With a huge success of latest titles of early access projects turning Game of the year, people now expect to have better results. But back at 2013 when Valve launched their early access program, doubt and scepticism surrounded the endeavour.

In the dawn of early access program, there was a tiny group of developers in Crate Entertainment. They had licensed the Titan Quest engine, and launched an alpha of “Grim Dawn“. Promising an ARPG, set in “A thematically-dark fictional world loosely based on the Victorian era”

Five years forward in 2018, the game has gone through all development phases, and launched. Sold more than a million copies over Steam and GOG, and now it have its fair share of DLCs, and one major expansion. An Xbox version is work-in-progress, now they have controller support on PC as well.

So, the question is: How this ARPG doing? Is it delivering on its promises? And what to expect playing this title?

Isometric ARPG at its Peak

Cairn is a massive world, huge areas split into four acts (Increased to six with the expansion). You have tons of places to explore, a mix of open world and dungeon delving, with several hidden sectors to find. One of the first things you will notice that dungeons don’t overshadow open world, a good balance here. Don’t get that wrong, dungeons are separated with loading screens, each level of it needs another loading screen. You wouldn’t notice much of these though, as the loading time is very short, and game performance on older machines is still okay.

As you navigate the continent, and face the hordes of Aetherials invasion, uncovering the fog of war and exploring this rich, hostile, and grim world, you will find interesting stuff tied with progression and achievements. Quests, faction tasks, and Devotion shrines. Restoring shrines nets devotion points which you can spend to get these sweet sweet constellation bonuses and skills. These devotion points can augment or modify your playstyle, as you can add similar effect to your skills, doubling it, or add different element to surprise your enemies. Like adding a debuff to your bombs, or AOE proc to your single target spell . etc.

On top of that: Equipments! The river of items will overflow your inventory, storage, and mules. Even your dreams! The loot drops in the classic form of a fountain, and it’s really a fountain. Hundreds of sets, unique items, randomized rare, double rare, and triple rare items! Then lies all the kinds of enchantments. You will always be satisfied with the itemization progression.

What’s more?

The isometric camera is a defining feature in the genre, you can rotate the camera to view from better angles, but rotation’s not required to enjoy the game. The fast pace of the action game is not exclusive to Grim Dawn, but it’s carefully designed to be satisfying for a wide variety of audience. Many of the attacks and spells have no cooldown timer, while the character having no “global cooldown timer” that some MMORPGs use.

This allow the player to have some skills to spam none-stop, with their attack/casting speed being the only limit (and they can go pretty much high!). For those who enjoy slower and more relaxed pace, there are other builds that rely on powerful cooldowns. They tends to be more tankier and takes their sweet time to kill things while being unkillable!

Between all these elements, you can enjoy hundreds of hours playing Grim Dawn, making new characters constantly to try new things (or earning another achievement). You may feel exhausted after each click-feast session, for all the good reasons.

A good story that needs better storytelling

The story of the grim dawn and the following Aetherial invasion is not a bad story, by all means. Actually, it’s surprisingly a pretty good story for a fast action isometric RPG. And in midst of action, there are some moral choices that makes you pause and think. The bleeding man lying on the side of road, he begs you to avenge him. His trade partner gut him, and stole all his goods. You promise to help him, and run atop the hill to find said man along with his caravan. Now it’s time for revenge and getting some good loot.

Or is it?

If you were not hasty and decided to listen to the trader, he will admit gutting his partner, but claim he have a good reason. Now you have to decide for yourself, do you believe this story or that? Neither have a proof but their word, and you get to choose. Some will choose this, some will choose that, and some will just bribe the trader for short term profit.

Such choices have some consequences, very small in scale, but very interesting for the added intrigue.

So what makes the story comes short?

I’ll tell you that: It’s the storytelling, plain and simple. The voice acting is almost non-existent beside some selected sentences, and everything is written, you have to read it all. Be it a dialogue, a codex, or a piece of letter. Of course it’s optional, for the most part. But at some point, you miss secret quest because you didn’t read that dairy or didn’t pay much attention to the details.

Best Defensive Constellations Grim Dawn

It could be annoying for some, while other will just read a guide online and get this quest done. But in either case, you miss the whole story if you skip reading it.

They also could expand more on cinematic scenes. The game has an interesting intro that tells a nice short story. It would be more interesting if more of these cinematics are added.

An active forum and community

So, back to one the strongest aspects of Grim Dawn. I must admit, I love forums in general myself, so my opinion maybe a little biased here. But that’s how I see it: A good game must have a good community that developers support, a place where people meet and discuss the game. Somewhere for the game to evolve, with the contribution of not only a thousand developers, but tens of thousands of players as well. that’s what I call development. And Grim Dawn success in this, maintaining a healthy forums where everything Grim Dawn can be discussed in a non-toxic way.

It’s not unusual to see some threads comparing Grim Dawn to other games of the genre like Path of Exile or Diablo 3. The thread don’t get moderated if someone claims the other games are better for whatever reason. It’s a good feeling to be a part of community that its leaders aren’t too sensitive nor easily scared. If you are tired of Giant gaming companies and their antics, lack of communication, and dictatorship model of developing games you pay for, Grim Dawn is an oasis for you to take a breath.

New guides are constantly coming out, and updated. You can find details about all things Grim Dawn, from quests to secrets, guides and tips, in very detailed fashion, and all levels of depth. Or you can make your own theories and take opinions from expert players.

In short, if you plan to play Grim Dawn, the official forums is a great way to have an enchanted experience, and more fun.

On-going support, updates, fixes

Continued support is one huge advantage these online RPGs have. MMORPGs receive constant patches, updates, rebalance, expansions, and improvements. Grim Dawn has such privileges, while being a single player game!

Microtransactions, loot crates, and games as a service are concepts that don’t exist in the world of Cairn. Yet the studio members have been very active on the forums, discussing the changes and getting feedback from community. There’s an entire sub-forum in the official forums for Developer Discussions. And in development, they work on introducing new DLCs and expansion at moderate prices. There’s a passion behind the creation of this game, which results in updates being bigger than originally intended.

With latest expansion in October, 2017 the game got whole two new classes. It previously had six, now up to eight, which might seem not a huge number. However, with multiclass system, you can have two classes not just one, with the new “combined” class being a class of its own, having its unique name and all. Like: combine “Nightblade” with “Arcanist” to get a “Spellbreaker” , or “Occultist” with “Soilder” to become a Witchblade”.

The number of combined classes before the expansion was 15, now it goes up to a whole lot of 28 combined classes! With all exciting classes of “Cabalist”, “Defiler”, “Purifier”, and everything else. It almost doubles the options of the original game. Not to mention the spray of items, factions, and new Acts of the story added with The Ashes of Malmouth expansion. It reminds us of good old days when DLCs were real expansions, expanding the game, and not being a cash grab for greedy developers.

The game also support mods, and with these, comes new countless ways to play. Don’t forget to check this out once you finish the vanilla game couple times.

Endless versatility, tons on builds and items to try

If you are familiar to this kind of game, you wouldn’t be surprised to know it have no character creation, beside the basic choice of Male/Female. At level one, all characters are equal, as an otherworldly being just left you, after using you as a husk. Your fate is in your hands, you get to customize the character the way you want as you level up. However, the customization is huge, really huge, we talking universally huge here, the stars in constellations above are involved!

The customization is deep, with advanced Multiclass system, attributes, highly versatile damage types, countless active and passive skills, augments, modifiers, damage conversion, enchantment items, and devotion stars. Also faction choices. It’s exactly what you expect from an ARPG, and more. This versatility manifest in the form of hundreds of builds, as seen in Build Compendiums in the official forums.

Do you like vampire builds? You can do a vitality blood sucker. Or you perhaps prefer pet builds, you can execute that in many ways, that vary in more than the type of pet you have. Melee builds could be magical, physical, or hybrids. Assassin-styled builds could be temporary tanky, or go all glass canon builds. Some builds could solo the toughest boss in game within 6 seconds, but they need incredible micromanagement to survive most of other encounters. While other people prefer the lazy reflect/retaliation builds.

You can make a build around an item, around a constellation, based on certain skills, or a mixture of those. Some builds rely on certain items, while others are beginners friendly. Some use certain buffs, while others drops them for a proc skill, or superior defense. It’s all possible, and more!

An ever-growing player base

Unlike most other RPGs, Grim Dawn has some interesting stats, according to this sweet steam chart:

The peak time of the active people playing simultaneously at anytime isn’t around the launch date (February 25, 2016). There was a peak time at launch, yes, then an understandable drop as more players “finished” the game. But then the first DLC came out and numbers went high again, almost catching up with launch numbers. And finally, the expansion came out and numbers skyrocketed, hitting a new peak almost 2 years after launch!

While charts is not very important for gamers as for investors in the industry, what this chart suggesting is important. As players number of Grim Dawn keep growing. It indicates higher quality post-launch product, and indicates other two things we mentioned earlier: Active developers, and active community. Also better income for the studio and so we can expect either: More high quality DLCs and expansions, or even better sequel. In either case, it’s more fun for us, the players.

It also a bit of good news for those who prefer experiencing multiplayer in the game, for playing with people, or merely trading. Be careful however, that you can’t join a a game with someone who don’t have same DLCs and expansions as you. Player will have to disable DLCs to play the game with someone who have only the vanilla game.

Storage management

With a huge pool of items to tinker with, micromanagement of inventory is inevitable. I mean, it could be manageable for the first character, as you get a decent inventory with several bags from quest rewards to expand your space. You normally don’t have to carry so much, like: couple armors and a weapon for swapping, few consumables, and some dynamite, and a quest item. That’s one bag worth of space, you got five, plus main inventory. The rest of your bags stay ready to be filled with all the loot you get from a session of playing, which you can sell, dismantle, or keep as your heart’s desire.

You can open a portal anytime, anywhere, go to the town and empty your inventory. Then continue your adventures.

Sound reasonable, yes?

Actually, yes!

Keeping the inventory tidy and easy to use is one of strong points in this game. However, that doesn’t make the management any easier, because what the game achieved in inventory, it crashed on the ground in storage space.

Your storage space is very small, one tab for your character, plus four shared tabs, and that’s it. So while you don’t need all augments and augment fragments stacked in your inventory, they will take up a full in storage. The unique, epic, and double rare equipments will need somewhere to be placed. And you will get tons of these items, even before you approach the endgame content.

Before you hit the level cap with first character, you will start feeling everything getting tighter around you. If you are patient, you will get to create mules, new characters to merely store items in. Otherwise, you get to sell very precious items for couple of worthless gold coins, which is sad.

Though, that’s not the end of story. Luckily, there are several third party programs that can solve your problem if you have one. And you can virtually have unlimited storage space, without being forced into dropping or selling a single item. They are easy to manage, with tools to search, categorize, and import/export to whatever character you want. They are 100% legal as well.

This drawback is one of the very few developers committed, and stood with it after they got their feedback. Claiming it’s designed to force players to make “meaningful decisions”. I don’t believe they are right about their claim, but if you have another opinion, share it with us in the comments below.

A steep learning curve

The bottom line of all of this, is that Grim Dawn is not an easy to learn game. Take that as you want, but the learning curve could be very harsh.

Not that it have clunky controls, nor it have none-sense progression. No, everything is neat and tidy, even with a controller. The main challenge is the amount of customization you can delve into, with the game not giving you a recommendation or suggestions as you level up and build your character.

We used to melee jump thru, breaking it while going thru, but now we cannot, we have to use a slow jump to get in range, melee it, and lose all momentum, then fall heavily to the ground, and be unable to escape lasers or whatever traps are set in spy missions.I fear we're going to die by hundred of thousands because of enemies they have buffed countless times already.just look at the grineer shield lancer. Who's going to use that, unless you want to turn warframe into a 'bulletjump-up-then-glide-down-shooting-everything-then-rinse-and-repeat'-fest.ALSO, the bulletjump, should include some sort of contact damage relative to the objects like the ventilation grids, because it is currently preventing the players to go thru in a single pass. And you can't always shoot things down because of the noise. This one has permanent frontside blocking AND still aim ultra accurately at you despite having nearly no visibility behind his shield, and it fires a burst of high dmg hitscan bullets.TATATATATA., 500hp down while you're guarding.there must be another solution.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed for first few hours, even the whole first playthrough. But don’t let that bring you down, the overwhelming amount of content is one of strongest aspects of the game, and you will slowly learn to appreciate it. Once you get the hold over the strands of the game, it will feel even more enjoyable, and there will be always new things to learn and try. More new builds concepts keep coming out with the ongoing development of Grim Dawn, that’s why more and more players keep coming back to it with each update.

So, find a build guide that’s friendly for beginners (and have a levelling guide), and follow it. These are tested and proven builds that require minimum amount of unique items (you may not have yet). They are low risk, allowing you to experience everything in a safer environment. Once you get hold of basics, you will get more ideas to make your own build, and test your own theories, and find your own ways to improve upon any existent concept.

And more importantly, have fun!

I hope that you liked this article. If so, you could read Titan Quest: History in the Making. Alternatively, you could read Titan Quest Coming to PS$, Xbox One & Switch in 2018.

Last updated on March 22nd, 2018

In this guide, I’ll give you some useful Grim Dawn tips to help you to play the game in a more efficient manner. Hopefully it’ll also make it a more enjoyable game for you.

Grim Dawn is an Action RPG that have been around since 2016, and with every update, DLC and expansion, it’s getting better and better. The next expansion, Forgotten Gods, was announced earlier this month, and is due to be released on Steam and GoG in second half of 2018.

The first expansion (released October, 2017) brought some interesting features like new classes and the entertaining Fashion Dawn. So I can’t wait to see what the Forgotten Gods have to add to the game next. But before we all get too excited about the future of Grim Dawn, I wish to share some few precious tips I’ve learned along my journey in Cairn that I wished I’d known them before I started playing.

I’ll split the tips into more than one article, to give some details on each part.

One: Attributes aren’t there to mess with:

The customization in Grim Dawn is immense. You can customize and tweak every aspect about your character, when you first level up, or later. You have the spiritual guide, an NPC who can reset your skill points and devotion points, so you can spend them elsewhere. All of your choices can be changed later in higher difficulties. Be it faction, or some random trader you murdered on the road, you have a second and third chance to rectify your choices.

It’s all designed to give you freedom, and encourage experimentation. Which means you can virtually go crazy and make what you like, and change it all later. And it’s true, but for one small tricky part: Attributes!

In addition, the previously hidden bonfire has been moved to mainland Izalith.Download links (Pick any one, they all have the same mod):,Installation Instructions:. All links point to the updated mod.Announcing: The BetterChaos ModAye, Siwmae!This mod replaces the Bed of Chaos with an entirely different fight. No more sweeping arms or collapsing floors. Dark souls 3 more dmg chaos bed or chaos orb. I'm abandoning support for this mod for now, but I'll try and work it out when I have time.Edit: Patch 1.1 is out, fixing NPCs not being in their covenants and the boss respawning after resting at an outside bonfire after defeating it. Back up your DATA folder, found under 'steamapps/common/Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition'.

The problem: It’s very easy to develop the wrong attributes

You get one precious attribute point each level, which you can spend on Physique, Cunning, or Spirit. Attributes gives small bonus to damage, health, or mana, but their main value is being a requirement for armors and weapons.

That’s where it gets tricky, you are level 20, and you get a nice drop which makes you all excited, but sadly you can’t equip due to lack of Spirit, or Cunning. You level up, you immediately spend your point into Spirit or Cunning. Then it’s enough, so you level some more, and keep spending points this way until you able to wear it.

Then you spend one more hour, and your are level 30. Except now that awesome drop isn’t awesome anymore. By end game, you realize that attributes can’t be refunded and new gear needs different distribution. Regret doesn’t feel good, does it?

The Solution: How to play safe with Attributes?

• Level up your mastery bar first:

Your two classes increase your attributes passively, which get you the points required to equip things. It decreases the need to spread your attributes points around and gives you a better idea of where you really need to spend your points. So don’t rush maxing all skills, but instead increase mastery bar early on.

• Physique is the king in Grim Dawn:

Plain and simple, Physique is the most important attribute. It not only gives flat numbers in health (which can be multiplied by various ways), but the best defensive armor requires so many points spent on Physique – maybe even Allpoints in it.

• Leave some points undecided for end-game:

If you – typically – spent all first 70 points in Physique, it’s probably wise to not spend the rest immediately. Leave the last ten or twenty points free until you get to Max level and have all the equipment you need. You might find a good accessory that needs five more spirit points or something.

• Utilize components as you level up:

Things like “Polished Emerald” , “Spellwoven Thread” , and “Vicious Jawbone” can be a source for some attributes early on. Even if they don’t give direct benefit to your build, using them for the stats is okay. You can see a full list of all components and what they do here.

• Take a look at Devotion Constellations:

Yes, the stars have attributes, and you might not need to go out of your way to get them! On the road to every major proc skill, you will find small boosts in attributes. You will grab these by default on the way, so don’t worry about changing anything for attributes.

Two: Build up your defenses properly:

No matter what level you are (beyond the first ten or twenty), you always need to prioritize defense. Yes, when I first heard this tip from professional players, I thought it sounded counter-productive, and boring, and that it would make progression slower. But having played this game over 400 hours, I can totally confirm the viability of the method.

The thing is: Grim Dawn is really grim. The enemies can be really weak on normal/Veteran, but become way stronger in Elite, and a total nightmare in Ultimate. Even in normal you can encounter some hard to pass encounters as a glass cannon. And if you can’t stand few hits, you will have to start running to escape, and will stop doing damage. While a good defense allow you to stand your ground for a bit, giving you better chance at finishing enemies before they finish you.

The solution: How to prioritize your defenses

1. Max out “Resistances”, that will take care of most damage types. Physical resistance is very hard to come by though.
2. Invest in “Health”, health is an all around decent defense against all types of enemies.
3. Defensive Abilities. It’s a sure way to not get hit by a crit, and also have enemies miss some hits on you. very important to not get 1 hit by the toughest bosses.
4. Don’t let “Armor” fall behind too much. Make sure to replace your low level equipments regularly with something with higher armor and decent stats.
5. “Circuit-Breakers” This is a term people use on skills that proc when player Health gets to a certain point (40% for example) and pop up some temporary strong defense buff or shield. Skills like “Blast Shield” from demotionalist , or Gaint’s Blood from Constalltions are very strong defense in tight situation where you can’t do much. I put it further down the list because it’s not mandatory in Normal and Elite. But Max these out by the time you get Ultimate, it will be very useful.
6. Over-cap your resistance. That’s a tip for the very end-game top contents, like hunting Nemesis bosses. Some bosses debuff your resistances, so having some extra reserve is always a good thing. Don’t neglect other important defenses to do that though.

There are many other sources of defense in Grim Dawn, but they are situational, and depends on build. Like Vitality damage builds, and retaliation builds, also solider shield builds are very strong and Crucible viable in general. But these are topics not for this article.

Three: Know what build you are doing

This one sounds basic stuff, but it could get very tricky. Grim Dawn is a rich world, with countless possibilities to replay the game and having different experience. Thus, the majority of the build guides out there are aimed towards experienced players, with long hours into the game, and decent stash of equipment ready to be used. In other words, many builds are gear dependent, which might not be friendly for beginners.

The matter is: If you don’t have the specific gear the build asks for, you either ask the guide writer to suggest you a beginner alternative, or don’t do this build. The drop rates in grim Dawn are very good, and you keep getting good items constantly as you play. But the loot tables are shared among all monsters in the world, meaning that anything can drop anything, and there are no specific spot to farm any item. The exception is some rare items called “Moster infrequents” or “MI”, which are moderately good items dropping from some specific bosses or monsters, and are okay for leveling, not top end game though.

Pro & Cons:

It’s good on one side, as it make you keep playing the game, go wherever you like, and enjoy all the content without worrying about the drops, since what you get here would be the same as you got there. But it restrict you from planning top builds without before having the items required. It might be wiser to plan your second character based on what you already have from first playthrough, not on what you wish/expect to have.

This problem extend to the first playthrough, since you have nothing to start with. Well, not “nothing” , since the faction gear can be excellent choices for some builds, best in slot even. These faction gear require some effort to get, but it’s fun and very rewarding to do.

Some beginners-friendly builds suggestions:

• Poison Caster Witchblade (Occultist/Solider)
• Pyromancer fire pets summoner (Occultist/Demotionalist)
• Sword and Board Pierce Blademaster (Nightblade/Solider)
• Two handed lightening Elementalist (Shaman/Demotionalist)
• Strom totem Warder (Shaman/Solider)
• Lightning/Pet Druid (Arcanist/Shaman)
• Dual pistols Sorcerer (Arcanist + Demolitionist)
• Dual Wield Melee Witchhunter (Nightblade + Occultist)
• Bleeding based Conjurer (Occultist + Shaman)

These are some quick concepts of varied basic builds in Vanilla to look forward. But notice that you don’t have to follow any of these suggestions, you can actually start the game and level with one mastery through the normal difficulty, then depends on your taste, decide where to go from there. Adding another mastery depends on your direction, or respec to another build entirely, Grim Dawn is flexible like this. These guidelines are only for those who don’t like to feel overwhelmed by the amount of customizations the game have.

Four: Learn how to craft, and what to craft:

And be patient for the recipes as they come one by one. Really, crafting a strong aspect of the game, that keep giving you candy along the way, but only gets to its full potential after hundreds of hours of gameplay. You can craft so many things. For example, consumables, powerful Mythical Relics, parts of legendary items sets and the most important components.

Saving the rare materials required for materials is crucial, as these are drops only, and not sold by any merchant (they can be exchanged for one another in act Four though). Things like Tainted Brain Matter, and Ancient heart and the like are precious little things, so use them wisely.

Don’t be afraid of trying to craft basic gear though; the items with question marks in the default menu of the blacksmith, named Enchanted Mace and Enchanted Boots. These are not strictly “magic” items. The crafting can give you rares and scales up with your level. You can actually get some solid gear from them to cover any weakness your character have. You just need scraps and gold, and some courage to go through the randomization.

I hope that you liked this article. If so, you could read Grim Dawn – A Detailed Analysis next. Alternatively, you could read Divinity Original Sin 2 Builds: Eternal Warrior.