Crate Games’ Grim Dawn continues to receive support with a new expansion, Fangs of Asterkarn, launching in 2024. Before that, fans can look forward to patch v.1.2.0.0, which overhauls the loot, level scaling, progression and more. It even adds a dedicated button for evading attacks.
When playing through the game on Normal, most areas will now scale up to 100 level, while Elite difficulty scales up to the same in all of them. Overhauled loot tables mean 30 to 60 percent fewer items but significantly increased loot quality and Iron Bits.
Health and Energy Potions are also gone, thus saving space in one’s inventory, and now exist as baseline skills with dedicated buttons. Toggled buffs are now automatically enabled and don’t have to be on the Skill Bar. You can also turn off a buff’s visuals for better visual clarity (or to see your armor better).
Other accessibility features include turning off the day/night cycle and fog and enabling timers for skill cooldowns. Check out some of the patch notes below and full notes here, which include balance changes for the different Classes.
V1.2.0.0 Patch Notes
[Major New Features]
- You can now play the entirety of the game up to the level cap on the difficulty that’s enjoyable to you. To support this, level scaling has been updated on Normal and Elite difficulty. Many areas on Normal now scale up to level 100. Elite difficulty now scales up to level 100 in all areas. Loot quality and experience gains remain higher on higher difficulties.
- Defeating the Loghorrean on Normal/Veteran difficulty now unlocks Elite and Ultimate difficulty for that character (note: this difficulty unlock is not retroactive). Players can proceed to the difficulty they feel most ready for.
- Completing a quest that grants Skill or Attribute points on a higher difficulty (Elite or Ultimate) will now reward you the Skill and Attribute points from the lower difficulties as well (ex. completing Kasparov’s Pocket Portal on Ultimate will also grant skill points from the Normal/Elite difficulty quests if you skipped them).
- All loot tables have been overhauled with 30-60% less items dropping. To compensate, loot quality and iron bits drops have been significantly increased.
- All Bosses now have a 100% chance to drop their (non-legendary) Monster Infrequents.
- A new base Evade skill has been added, bound to Spacebar by default. Evade interrupts any other action to immediately dash in the desired direction and offers a brief invulnerability window (iframes). Pause now defaults to P and the Party window to K. Existing players will need to set a keybind or reset their keybinds in order to take advantage of this. Keybinds have been reset for Xbox players to accomodate this addition.
- Health and Energy Potions have been removed from the game. The character now has potion skills baseline and does not need to keep them in their inventory. Dedicated potion buttons have been added to the Quickbar.
- Toggled buffs are now automatically toggled on and no longer need to be on the skill bar (note: if your character currently has two exclusive skills learned, the one with more points invested takes priority).
- You can now disable visuals for toggled buffs in the game options to improve visual clarity on your character and to show off all that gear.
- New visuals have been added to alert you to Legendary, Monster Infrequent, Double Rare and Double Rare Monster Infrequent drops. Monster Infrequents are now marked by an icon to separate them from standard Rare items.
- Monster Health Bar options have been improved. You can now toggle thicker health bars and display % values for monster health.
- Monster Health Bar can now be toggled to also display all debuffs applied to the target monster.
- The Nullification mechanic (ex. Arcane heroes) has been overhauled. It now purges all temporary buffs and Disables toggled buffs for 5 seconds. No more fumbling through your skill bars to turn auras back on.
- New Accessibility Feature: Disable Day-Night Cycle. By enabling this, the game will be perpetually set to noon.
- New Accessibility Feature: Disable Fog. If you do not wish to see the ambient fog, you can disable it in the video options.
- New Accessibility Feature: Cooldown Counters. Enable this to see a numeric countdown on your skills on the quickbar.
- New Accessibility Feature: Auto-Pick Up Radius can now be increased or reduced from its default setting.
- A new keybind has been added to hide the User Interface for taking screenshots. Existing players will need to set a keybind or reset their keybinds in order to take advantage of this.
[Shattered Realm]
- The exit portal mechanic has been overhauled for non-boss shards. Each player now receives their own personal portal at their current location that will take them out of the shard and into the next one.
- A new Eternal Waystone has been added that can take you up to Shard 90 with rewards. Existing
- Deathly Waystones and blueprint have been converted to this waystone. A new Deathly Waystone is available upon beating Shard 95 or higher, but any previously unlocked shards are retained.
- Shrines have been redesigned with powerful new, but temporary blessings, all of which boost your Maximum Movement Speed for their duration. These blessings no longer carry any penalties. Shrine offerings have been updated.
- Increased drop chance of Shattered Souls from champion enemies.
- Increased monster % Crit damage by 10% on Ultimate difficulty.
- Increased monster Health scaling on Normal and Elite difficulties, particularly at shards 60+.
- Reduced monster Physical damage on Elite and Ultimate difficulties, particularly at shards 60+.
- Monster % Heal effects are now reduced in the Shattered Realm.
- The “A Done Deal” achievement now requires you to interact with each of the Shattered Realm’s shrines at least once, rather than having all 5 effects active at the same time.
- The Bonebleach special map has been disabled. It may return in the future after some much needed maintenance.
- Reduced Physical damage done by traps.
[Crucible]
- Reduced the number of non-boss monsters spawned in the Crucible.
- Waves 150-170 now have 6 mutators as a positive player mutator is now always rolled for the 5th mutator.
- Increased monster % Crit damage by 5% on Gladiator difficulty
- Monster % Heal effects are now reduced in the Crucible.
- Reduced Tribute penalty for failing the event, particularly if failing after using a checkpoint.
- The Tribute cap has been increased to 150.
- Spawn areas no longer grant a movement speed buff to monsters.
- Nullification has been re-enabled in the Crucible, at a reduced duration. Loxmere Nightmage’s nullification remains disabled as it is an instant effect that cannot be dodged.
- Monsters now deal less Physical damage in the Crucible on Gladiator difficulty.
- Increased % Physical Resist granted by the Blessing of Ulo to 10%.
- Deathchill Beacons now cast Chilling Surge more frequently.
- Inferno Beacons now cast Firestorm more frequently.
- Stonewall Banners now cast Heal more frequently.
- Vanguard Banners now cast Frenzy more frequently and the Frenzy effect also grants % Max Attack/Cast Speed bonuses.
[Modding]
- The world map size limit has been increased from 2gb to 4gb. This should dramatically increase the size of mod maps you can create, but be aware that Crate will be using up some of that new space if you plan on modding the campaign map.
- The console now logs lua errors in custom games.
- Faction Slots have been expanded to 40. Note that Crate will be using these up through 18 in the near future, who can say beyond that. So plan accordingly!
- Skill Modifier slots on items have been increased to 6.
- Localization has been integrated into the game data. You can alter localizations within your mods by overwriting and updating those files.
- Added bool Item.IsType(object id) for checking if an entity is an item within Lua functions.
- A new pet modifier template has been added that can override all 4 of the Raise Skeleton pet arrays.
[Tech]
- Fixed an issue where the Arcane Bomb celestial power was not refreshing if reapplied.
- Fixed some issues with assigning celestial powers to movement skills granted by Augment Runes.
- Fixed an issue where putting skill points in a modifier that grants pet bonuses would not refresh until the ability was recast.
- Fixed an issue where refreshing Trap and Freeze crowd control effects would ignore their respective resistances and be applied at full duration.
[Art]
- Rock textures have been modernized across the game, particularly in the base game regions.
[Game]
- Difficulties have been rebalanced to account for the ability to play up to level 100 on all difficulties. Normal difficulty is a little harder as you approach level 100 in all game modes to smooth out the transition to higher difficulties, while Elite and Ultimate difficulties are now easier at level 1-50 for new characters using Merits.
- You can now select your desired Main Menu theme in the game options.
- A new Monster mechanic has been added: Sundered. Many bosses can now Sunder your defenses, causing you to take X% additional damage for Y seconds. Multiple instances of Sundered do not stack, only the strongest effect is active.
- All mutators no longer have negative effects. Many mutators have been redesigned. Monster mutators that granted resistances no longer do so. Positive player mutators are now always rolled for the 2nd and 5th mutators.
- Challenge areas have had their loot quality and difficulty increased.
- Reduced the minimum chance to hit to 55%, from 60%, this is an indirect buff to Defensive Ability stacking.
- Hero Monster Archetypes (ex. Burning/Swift/etc) have had their special abilities updated/buffed. The most dangerous hero archetypes now have more prominent visuals to distinguish their presence.
- Bounty Hero monsters that use a Hero Archetype now correctly include their archetype in their name.
- Many vanilla Grim Dawn monsters have received a bump to their various abilities to bring them up to speed to modern standards.
- Stun, Freeze, and Petrify effects have been removed from most standard (non-hero/boss) monster abilities.
- Increased the Health of most bosses at low levels. This change has a minimal impact on endgame boss health with the exception of some vanilla bosses that had underpowered health pools compared to their expansion counterparts. This change does not apply to the Crucible.
- Reduced Monster Bleeding Resistance on Elite and Ultimate difficulties by 3% and 4%, respectively.
- Reduced Monster Vitality Resistance on Elite and Ultimate difficulties by 4% and 8%, respectively.
- Monster auras no longer grant % Damage Absorption unless it is their explicit purpose to be a defensive aura (ex. Defender heroes, Outlaw Skirmishers). This will prevent scenarios where overlapping auras can make monsters unusually tanky. Some auras had their other bonuses buffed to compensate.
- Monster abilities no longer apply % Resist Reduction and flat Resist Reduction. Unique monster debuffs that reduced resists continue to do so.
- Many Monster special attacks, particularly melee and breath attacks, now stop tracking the player’s movement past a certain point, making it easier to evade those attacks.
- Many Monster special attacks, particularly those that apply Sunder, have had their animation speeds reduced.
- Monsters with charge abilities are now slower when charging and have a finite pursue range.
Increased Monster % Life Leech Resist. This makes % Attack damage Converted to Health less effective. On Ultimate difficulty, this is roughly a 30% reduction against an average boss. - Defensive/healing abilities and Constellations have received a buff to compensate for this change.
% Damage Reduction debuff effect no longer reduces the intensity of other debuffs (ex. reducing how much % Slow a monster’s attack applies). This was already the case for the new Sunder mechanic and is now consistent for older debuffs. - Reflected debuff effects (ex. Sunder, % Damage Reduction, etc.) are now applied at up to 30% intensity.
- Wendigo-type monsters have had their zoomies reined in and no longer approach you at the speed of sound.
- Monster health now scales more appropriately in Multiplayer. Mutators that affect monster health are now more clear as to how much % Health they provide.
- Removed Defense against pets from Celestial bosses.
- Tripled the rate of infamy gain with the Outcast faction when choosing to be hostile.
- Doubled the rate of fame/infamy gained with Kymon’s Chosen and the Order of Death’s Vigil.
- Pets now default to an Aggressive stance rather than the Normal stance. This setting can still be toggled on a pet by pet basis as desired.
- Increased drop rate of Manticore Eyes from hero and boss monsters and their corrupted counterparts.
- Leap and Chargethrough (ex. Vire’s Might) type attacks can now be bound to Left-Click.
- Skill tooltips in the Skill Tree Window now display detailed skill point investment info (how many points the mastery + how points from items). There is now also an overcap warning if your skill exceeds the ultimate skill point cap.
- More attributes have been added to the character sheet, mainly % Reflect Resistance and additional Pet Attributes.
