Grim Dawn Preview

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Written by BuckGB on July 8th, 2013

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The mechanics of healing in the game are a bit different to others in the genre - potions heal you to full health but have a very long cool down, making spamming impossible. However, stay out of combat for a while and your health will regenerate fairly fast. While this might sound heavily abusable, I've found that the encounters are designed with this mechanic fully in mind. Mobs will surround you, attack you from every angle, shoot projectiles at you and give chase. Getting away to heal up is not always simple and the mechanic is interrupted if you happen to take any damage while fleeing. Weapon swapping is encouraged, and it's almost necessary to have both a tanking and ranged option as a Soldier, which diversifies the fights and gives you lots of choices as to how to handle tricky situations. The mechanic does influence the boss fights greatly however, and I found that when it's a one on one situation with a boss who is very strong and has stunning abilities, the best option was always to kite, dash in for some quick strikes, then kite once more. There is also a tendency for mobs to inflict spikey damage which can cause death fairly quickly. This can get a bit frustrating when paired with stuns and the healing mechanic, especially in tight spaces as its easy to get surrounded with not many options left. Many would respond to this with the answer of "get better gear" but I'm of the belief that certain gear types or stat boosts shouldn't be required to play the game, and if they are then this may be considered a design flaw.

There's also a crafting system that will be more fleshed out in the final version of the game. At the moment monsters sometimes drop combinable elements that can be fused on to either your weapons, armor or accessories giving a wide variety of bonuses. These elements can also be combined with others of the same type increasing the bonus they imbue. Stack six of the same kind of element together and you'll get the maximum bonus allowed as well as a set bonus. Once you find the Inventor NPC, you can remove the elements from the items, however this will either cost you all of the elements or the item itself, so you will have to choose wisely. The game makes mention of blueprints and has special crafting drops such as scrap and aetherial stones which are apparently used for higher level crafting later on in the game, but these are not present in the Alpha.

Monster variety is also quite well implemented. I rarely found myself getting bored with the types of monsters I was encountering from one area to the next, and within a certain monster type, Crate has created enough variants to keep things interesting. Plain old zombies have around 5 different variants right from the start, and these range from cannon fodder to incredibly powerful (Cold Ones, I'm looking at you). There are also varying classifications of monsters with the highest ones (like Elites or Champions) dropping floating loot piñatas which you can then burst open in a climax of warm gooey loot.

This brings me onto one of the more controversial aspects of Grim Dawn - level scaling. Yes, the monsters level scale. But before you hurl your monocle to the floor in disgust, let me point out the caveat of the implementation - the scaling is capped within a range. So, monsters in a certain area will start at a certain level scale up to a point, then they will stop. Personally, I feel this system works quite well and for the most part I hardly noticed it was happening. My biggest problem with level scaling in principle is that at any time in a game that uses flat scaling, all encounters can feel similar because the monsters are always on par with the player. It can totally ruin the sense of tension when exploring uncharted areas as no matter where you go, the monsters will always the same level as you. This doesn't happen in Grim Dawn though as you often enter areas that have monsters starting at a range far above your current level. You can make a choice if you want to try and take them on for greater XP and loot with an added risk, or flee to other areas more suitable for your level; the choice is entirely up to you. This does have a side effect of making you feel like you are progressing slower while your level is within the range of an area, but I found that each time you level up, you get something that the mobs don't - extra skills or more powerful versions of what you already have. If you choose wisely, you should be able to keep an edge over your foes. I found this had the added effect of forcing me to look at my stats and carefully consider what worked best with my skills each time I leveled up. That being said it can't be ignored that the scaling has the potential to dampen a sense of player empowerment.

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