That said, version 0.9.11a was out, and I was grinding runs to level up to 1st Lieutenant---I needed one more Gold Badge to do so, and I felt the going for a Gun Kata-based run for Angel of Marksmanship (Hard) was the way to go. I was too impatient, and died a couple of times. It was still fun though, redeveloping that intuition about the mob AI to better take care of them while minimising damage. JH differs from DoomRL in that the mobs do not pick stuff up, so their movement are independent of whatever gear/items are dropped on the ground. The lack of diagonal movement means that what used to require only one movement to get out of the way in DoomRL is now a 2-movement exercise. Cover is super important in JH, and running away for better cover usually beats standing one's ground to shoot back. There are some improvements in the UX in that the amount of damage done/taken is controlled by a straightforward linear decay formula as opposed to something more RNG-heavy like the old ``dice-based'' system that is DoomRL---the amount of damage that can be taken off is estimated in the targeting module.
However, punishment does come harshly if one is impatient, which is usually how most playable characters (PCs) die in rogue-likes.
Second, after getting a little worn from grinding JH (I still haven't gotten my Gold Badge), I decided to switch over to Grim Dawn for a spell. Grim Dawn is an isometric-ish Diablo-like that is more developed than the games it succeeded, and this includes my beloved Torchlight II. The big thing about Grim Dawn as compared to old school Diablo 2 or even Torchlight II is the massive class system. There are 9 masteries, and one can pair them up in-game. This means that there are 36 unique classes that are made up of these dual-masteries. Add that to the 9 deliberate single mastery pseudo-classes, that means there are 45 different classes from which builds can be created from. Combine that with the three difficulty levels, each difficulty level toggling between regular and veteran, we're looking at at least 270 different playthroughs of the main storyline (including of the DLC). The true number is much larger because in each of the 45 different classes, there are myriads of different builds that can be constructed, each with a different play-style.
That is a stupid number of full playthroughs to consider. The maps themselves feel much larger than that of Diablo 2, and are more gritty than the 4-class Torchlight II. In short, there's likely to be no way for me to ever ``complete'' the game's entirety the way I did for the four different classes in Torchlight II (I simply can't play through the 45 of them necessary for just clearing the Normal difficulty). Nevertheless, Grim Dawn's sheer variety makes it as replayable as it gets, and a definite guilty pleasure.
And for what it's worth, I don't do min-maxing on my PCs for such games, since I'm too lazy to spend too much effort in the theory crafting as well as putting in the logistical efforts of farming/managing required in twinking. I mean, just look at this graphic from Crate Entertainment about statistics about Grim Dawn replicated here for reference:
Anyway, my most successful character is a level-100 Sorcerer (Arcanist-Demolitionist) that relies on Albrecht's pew-pew (official name: Albrecht's Aether Ray). It's basically a high-mana drain high DPS ``laser'' beam. The catch behind its power is that one has to stand still when using it---this makes kiting stupidly hard to pull off. The poor PC is doomed to never completing Ultimate difficulty due to this. I tried mitigating the problem of immobility by cranking as much DPS as possible through the over-levelling into the ``ultimate level'' process---but that runs into a limit because ultimate levels do not scale on forever while the enemy levels (and thus their HP and damage) do in Ultimate difficulty. I also tried cranking up the casting speed, but there is an actual limit of 200% on it (as is the attack speed). I cranked up the Aether damage as well, but eventually I will run into the situation where I needed to farm really hard for really rare attributes. All in all, it just means that my level-100 Sorcerer has had a good run.
The character I played today though is a Blademaster (Nightblade-Soldier). The build concept is to go all out dual-wielding melee weapons and thwacking things left, right, and centre. Watching things blow up with nice numbers is always fun. I've not had much luck with melee characters in Grim Dawn thanks to the ludicrous amounts of damage that come in from the later levels/difficulties, but I think I would be quite happy if I can complete both Normal and Elite difficulties. It's meant to be fun, a guilty pleasure, not some kind of work.
And each time I play Grim Dawn, time just slips on by quickly and quietly.
I must say though, running Grim Dawn on Eileen-II meant that I could crank up all the video settings to stupid-high, and things worked well above the playable 60 fps while simultaneously playing YouTube videos on the next screen. Thanks to setting up alarm-profiles in Throttlestop, I managed to keep the run-time average temperature to something like 93°C with a PL1 of 27 W and an indoor ambient temperature of 31°C. The keyboard does feel a little bit hot, so I'm going to bring down the PL1 value back to 25 W and continue using the alarm-profile feature have a slightly more responsive and aggressive thermal throttle.
Alright, that's enough nerding out for a guilty pleasure. Till the next update.
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