Just for the fun of it, I thought I’d try leveling the base Mage class to 100. I certainly got a kick out of trying it in Grim Dawn, which actually has a secret medal if you get to level 100 and complete the base game in Hardcore (on Ultimate difficulty) without choosing any mastery classes.
Kind of unfortunate that the mastery is tied to the story, so I’m certainly missing those Idol slots you get. The bonus passives would be nice too, though I’m about to max out my Mage passives pretty soon so I guess it doesn’t matter. Well, I still got some work to do though. I can only imagine what those later levels are going to feel like.
Yeah, but in GD it’s REALLY hard because you get NO abilities at all. You don’t even get stat boosts At least with your base class Mage you’re going to be stacking in some benefits. DISCLAIMER, not trying to down play the task at hand (I think it’s cool as caca), but that achievement in Grim Dawn is balls out hard, especially if you do it with self-found.
EDIT: I actually take it back. It’s going to be probably just as hard, because I can’t imagine what level’s 70-100 are going to be like doing this. Especially if you decided to step into Areana. LOL.
Yeah, I was actually going to touch on this but wasn’t sure how many other people tried it. Yes, thus far in comparison, GD is certainly much more challenging for the reasons you describe. It was still fun though, and I believe I got to level 50+ a couple times trying before reaching an untimely demise.
Yeah, thus far I feel my damage is really going to suffer in those later levels. Right now, I reach around wave 100 in Arena. Though, it’s certainly a time consuming process.
That’s why it’s easier in LE though (& that says more about how difficult it is in GD). In LE, you get most of the skills & you can take the lower half passives for all of the masteries. I’m genuinely not sure which class this would be least difficult to do on.
Presumably you’ll run up to the end of time then just do loads of monoliths/arenas to level. HC or SC?
Honestly cannot fathom doing this game in HC. Just the very nature of Arenas and Fire Golems makes me quake like a little rabbit.
I generally don’t brag but to the best of my knowledge having been on the forums of GD for several years and fairly active, I’m one of the few individuals that actually did it on HC and got that special (albeit absolutely nothing but a trophy as it has no actual use) item. There’s a long thread over there that had the people that were doing it and we we’re actually given special nicknames based on greek gods for achieving it by the first person to unlock that achievement. My user name is the same as here but my character avatar is Poseidon. Brother to Zeus and Hades, the other two (users adoomgod and contractor) who had done it by the time I did.
That is probably the biggest gaming achievement I’m actually pretty proud of so I’m going to gloat just a tad.
Wow, mad props to you sir. I knew there were a few people that did it, but clearly I didn’t know I was speaking to one of them. That is one incredibly hard achievement. Congrats.
Yeah, I have to say…the higher level I get the more challenging this is becoming. I’m clearly going to have to re-evaluate my gear and some of my skill choices. IF this was HC, I think I’d just exit out of any Monolith with some of the newer Chapter 8 enemies and keep repeating until I got easier enemies. They’re certainly tuned a bit higher than most.
Also, I wouldn’t have made it far if it was HC. I remember the first Monolith I got was just a convoy of Siege Golems. Managed to kill 2 of them before coming across another 3 in a tight space and quickly met my demise.
Nope, you can put points in the bottom half of the passive trees of the other masteries without picking a mastery, you just don’t get the mastery skill/bonuses.
Thanks! It took me forever to do it, I think about three a half months, and I lost two characters along the way (one at level 92 which really really really stung HA) but it was very gratifying for certain.
TBF, I’ve got ~10 Sentinels of various flavours, I’m mainly waiting for the devs to fix Smite so it can proc ailments (& fissure in the right place, plus fissure procing ailments)…
Being a massive melee fanatic, and any arpg I always start with the closest thing to a paladin/inquistor type character, I heartily approve of this message.
I’m actually more of a ranged guy. Would you still think well of me in the morning if I said most of them were Shield Throw (or variants of Future Strike that lead up to the Shield Throw build)?
Just a minor update on my path to level 100 (lvl 76 right now). I decided to make an Arena push. I was really just trying to hit wave 150, but fell one short lol. It just wasn’t meant to be.
The current character stats (also the calm before the storm);
At least with your base class Mage you’re going to be stacking in some benefits. 
DISCLAIMER, not trying to down play the task at hand (I think it’s cool as caca), but that achievement in Grim Dawn is balls out hard, especially if you do it with self-found. 
