The actual cheese of the forge is picking the pike of returning, placing one character in the stairs, waay above, and throwing the pike into him. If it's a fighter that's 4 throws the first turn, each doing their respective damage + 30ish damage per throw because of the weight+height. I killed it in 2 turns, he didn't even move since he does nothing in the first turn.

That fight is also a lot easier if you focus on using a heavy hitter with a bludgeoning weapon doing damage. I made judicious use of Sanctuary, and made sure any vulnerable characters were out of range. You can use ranged weapons to lure Grym and change its threat assessment.

I cast haste on Karlach, giving her 4 hits every turn. She'd do 60 - 90 damage each turn, then have shadowheart cast sanctuary. All while making sure everyone is out of range so grym can't do much damage to anyone else out of frustration that he can't target Karlach. Others still sometimes get knocked down due to his Quake spell, but I was able to make it through that fight on Tactician without anyone falling.

Be careful not to trigger a melee reaction though, since that will cause Grym to recalculate his target and can mess up the plan.

I'm sorry, you can hit it with the forge hammer? Hot damn.

You aren't told this in game, tho. The quests in question don't even apply the pressure to give the illusion time is crucial, the way they do with the worm in your head every 5 minutes. You have no way knowing that these two specific quests have a time limit. It's not like every quest has them.

Once you hit the lock out point, there aren't any waypoints for act one when you open the map... I didn't get all the way through acts one and two by literally walking everywhere and ignoring fast travel, lol.

No waypoints was why I had to walk back to the elevator to even try going back. I don't want to drop spoilers, but I have a hunch what the "point of no return" is and depending on your methodology playing the game you might trigger it relatively early in act 2 or it could be very nearly the last thing you do... I'm assuming you happen to have done the later and didn't even notice when you got locked out of act 1.

they quite literally show a popup that uncompleted quests may be broken

It is unclear which quests will be broken, or how many. 15 of the 20 or so quests I had at that point couldn't actually be progressed then anyway, but 5 could.

you clearly should do before continuing, like exploring the tower

How is this clear? I was assuming once I got to Moonrise it would be one long fight to Ketheric and so was trying to do everything else first, imagining it would effectively conclude the act. I had no reason to assume it would be a social zone that I needed to visit and complete quests in before doing the temple. I had no idea there would be an assault on the tower.

it’s quite clear that once you reach the gauntlet that maybe that’s a bigger thing than a simple side quest, specially when the popup shows up.

The pop-up is, but a similar popup happens when you leave Act 1, but many things remain accessible. So it is inconsistent. I think it would help to have quests show recommended levels so it is more obvious what order you're expected to do them in - you could still go out of order like you can now, but I think it would be a better experience.

If you do the underdark, then port out and do the mountain pass, you can also be just about level 7 before A2 which makes some of the early fights there quite easy

Found this out on accident when I realized I'd skipped the pass for the second time and trudged back, determined to finish it.

Still haven't seen these harpies people are talking about tho. Playthrough 3 I suppose.