Grim Dawn Grim Misadventure #131

In the first Grim Misadventure of the year, the folks at Crate Entertainment look back at the results of their continued support for their action-RPG Grim Dawn throughout 2017. The list is quite impressive and includes six major patches and content updates, a smoother leveling experience, performance improvements, and a full expansion in Ashes of Malmouth among many other new features that all make “now” a good time to revisit the macabre action-RPG.

Here’s an overview of the new stuff introduced in 2017 along with a few paragraphs on what’s next for Grim Dawn:

Welcome to Grim Misadventures, 2018 edition! It’s crazy to think that just a little under two years ago, a little big game called Grim Dawn was unleashed upon the masses, and we’re still going strong! 2018 is lining up to be another big year for Grim Dawn, with major content updates and surprises on the horizon.

We’re eager to share all that’s still in store for you but first, as tradition dictates, let’s take a look back at everything the previous year had brought us.

2017 saw the release of the highly anticipated Ashes of Malmouth expansion in October, as well as 6 major patches and content updates that kept you coming back for more.

From the Past…

• Infrequently Monstrous – It turns out monster love loot too. Over the last year, content updates introduced a variety of new Monster Infrequents, including some exclusive Legendary quality drops from Alkamos in the Steps of Torment and Shar’Zul in the Bastion of Chaos.
• Qualities of Life – Across the various patches, the game saw many quality of life improvements that simply made things smoother and more enjoyable.

  This included things such as: displaying attacks per second on weapons instead of the vague “speed” adjectives; shrines, dismantling and the spirit guide automatically grabbing materials from the stash; displaying resist overcap values on the character sheet; greying out skill bonuses on gear if they do not apply to your character’s masteries; adding debuff status effect icons; updating Celestial Power buff icons; added shortcuts to some old dungeons; and we could go on…

  In a nutshell, we qualitied a lot of life over the last year!

• Smooth Levelling – With v1.0.0.8, we took a look at the game’s difficulty scaling across the different game modes and with character progression.

  We smoothed out the spike in difficulty when moving up to Elite and Ultimate as well as improved skill damage at lower ranks so that characters felt more powerful and skills were more impactful right away.

• Loyalty Rewarded – The Loyalist Item Pack / Loyalist Edition saw another update last year with the introduction of two new helms for everybody that purchased those packages.

  It appears that loyalty is always rewarded, in style!

• DirectX11 Performance Update – As we work towards the release of Grim Dawn on the Xbox One, we push the improvements we make to the PC version as well.

  With v1.0.2.0, we released a major upgrade to the game engine that enabled support for DirectX11 that saw significant performance gains for most players.

• Controlled Controllers – Also from the console port, we included a major overhaul of the game’s controller support that made ditching the mouse and keyboard actually an awesome and very enjoyable experience.
• New and Old Casting – Another gift from the upcoming console release, we updated the casting behavior of skills to be much more responsive and intuitive, allowing spells to cast immediately towards your cursor rather than requiring your character to first come within a certain cast range.

  This was not for everybody though, so a new ‘Classic Casting’ option was added in the game options for those that preferred the old method.

• Cleaned the Pool – The item pool received a scrubbing last year. We not only removed several stats from the entire item pool (ex. flat Life Leech damage), we also made major revisions to various loot tables. Common quality Monster Infrequents were removed entirely and rare quality Monster Infrequents were made to always drop with affixes.

  In addition, common quality items were removed from the loot pool past a certain level, significantly reducing screen clutter.

• Ashes of Malmouth – We can’t make a list of monumental updates in 2017 without mentioning Grim Dawn’s expansion. Ashes of Malmouth was a massive undertaking, but with a 90% positive rating on Steam and a 4.9 score on GoG it seems the players agree that the work paid off.

  Whether you compare it to the tiny DLCs of the modern age or even old school expansions, Ashes of Malmouth is absolutely huge. Featuring two new story “acts”, two new masteries, hundreds of new items, dozens of bosses and dungeons, item skill modifiers, the Illusionist and more, Ashes of Malmouth blew away its original scope and offers you a veritable mountain of content.

• Crucible Expanded – The most recent content update, v1.0.4.0, brought not only two new arenas to the Crucible DLC, the Crucible of the Legion and the Crucible of the Void, but it also introduced 20 challenging new waves featuring the Ashes of Malmouth enemies.

  The skill bar and the rewards that follow were raised again for Grim Dawn’s most committed players.

What’s Next?

2017 may have been a big deal, but we’re not done yet! Coming posthaste, we have patch v1.0.5.0, which will introduce the next roguelike dungeon, the Ancient Grove.

There you will face off against the beasts of Cairn, forever marred by the corrupting presence of the Aetherials and the Chthonians. In the end, you will take down one of Mogdrogen’s creations that has become lost to the void.

Also featured in this update will be a series of new Monster Infrequents for you to track down, including two new Unique items that drop exclusively from the dungeon’s final boss.

Beyond v1.0.5.0, we have a few surprises still in store that we’re not quite ready to talk about yet; but rest assured, it’s turning out to be another busy year for Grim Dawn development!