GM #151 showed us some more new monsters we’ll be fighting.
GM #152 had yet more new items for us to find.
The stream of 7th December started off with some more new music from Skewsound.
So today I would like to talk to you guys about a few things that are coming up in Grim Dawn. One of them is the upcoming patch. Coming up very soon, we’ll talk about that later. The second is actually a highly requested feature that we finally got working recently and I’m going to show you a bit of those things today. Needless to say both the expansion and upcoming patch are going to be some exciting things for you guys.
ShotokanEditor : 64bit?
x64 bit is not coming with this patch. It’s almost ready, we still need to do some testing. I expect it’ll go up when the expansion goes up next year.
SkullFire58 : Is the feature in the patch or the expansion?
Yes. I’ve got two things to show you today, one of them is coming in the expansion. The other is coming in the next patch.
Seltsamuel : Will you show “testing boi”?
Testing boi was a retaliation character that I asked the playtesters to send me so I could have a look at those new …
For those that don’t know the next expansion is adding two new attributes to items and skills. The first is increased healing which affects potions, which affects your healing skills, which affects life steal, and the second one is retaliation damage added to attack. So imagine for example that you’ll throw a grenado and a portion of your retaliation damage will be added to the explosion. So while we were testing that stat I asked the playtesters to send me some of their characters so we could get a good for what kind of numbers we should be expecting from various build they could come up with.
Okay I’m going to jump in with this character who’s called Token Boy for some reason. So what am I doing with a level 2 character in a stream. You guys have seen this stuff before. What could possibly be exciting about a level 2 character?
JustTheVeryBest : What’s your favorite skill on Oathkeeper Big Z?
Aegis probably, Aegis of Menhir is probably my favourite.
DenisMashutikov : Will retaliation add to ranged shots too?
Well it depends on what build you come up with. There are actually retaliation modifiers on gear that apply to ranged stuff. Like there’s a rifle that definitely has retaliation added to attack.
So the reason I’m opening up this guy today, notice he’s on normal difficulty, nothing substantial, he’s level 2, got a mastery to select, there’s Oathkeeper, got 3 skill points, I’ve already spent his attribute points, but oh look. In my inventory are two new items we’re going to be introducing with the Forgotten Gods expansion. What are these items you might ask? They are Merits, similar to the Crucible, you now get to use these items in the main campaign. What they do is allow you to unlock higher difficulties on your new characters. So I’ve got a Champion’s Merit that unlocks Elite and I’ve got the Saviour’s Merit that unlocks Ultimate. And that means you immediately get access to new difficulties, you immediately get all of the attribute and skill point rewards that any quest on lower difficulties would have given you which means you don’t have to go back to Normal, you don’t have to go back to Elite, if you want to start on Ultimate you will immediately get those points. You will immediately get all of the inventory bags which you would have unlocked and you immediately get all of the riftgates on the lower difficulties. Boom! 4 more attribute points, 7 skill points. Just like that. Now if I go to the main menu and click this little thing here, oh look I’m level 2 going into Ultimate difficulty!
Thewordbearer : will we need to go to lower difficulties to get devo shrines?
And that is the other thing that comes with these tokens. In Forgotten Gods we are not only enabling every single shrine that is in the world on every difficulty in the game, we’re going to be adding new shrines to the world in places you haven’t before had shrines. And that means, if you go straight to Ultimate difficulty you will be able to get all 55 devotion points in one single playthrough. On top of that, with the upcoming patch we will be buffing the bonuses from Warrants, from Mandates and Writs so you can get your reputations up faster on your alts than ever before.
anathema2741 : how is the level scaling on ultimate at level 2?
Well, let’s take a look. Now I will warn you that anyone who’s going to play like this? It’s going to be hard. I would describe this as almost playing on players 8 in Diablo 2 back in the old days, but you’ll notice these enemies are actually scaled to my level. We’ve gone ahead and through Elite and Ultimate difficulties and updated these guys so they scale from one all the way up to max level. And yes, they hurt. They give a lot more XP, but they hurt. You’re going to get all the attribute and skill points like I said and you’re going to need them because this stuff is way harder than what you’re used to. I will point out, if you look at my resistances, they are in fact altered by the difficulty scaling.
Now where do you get these tokens you might ask next. And the answer to that is in the Forgotten Gods new quest hub. As soon as you unlock the new quest content in the upcoming expansion you’ll be to go right over to a vendor and buy as many of these as you want for every single one of your characters that you’re going to roll.
CrateEntertainment : We need to have the official HC Ultimate Crate survival challenge
We do need to have the official Hardcore Ultimate Crate survival challenge, preferably with alcohol because it’s going to take a lot of it.
szpila152 : there will be new nemesis ?
Absolutely.
AZnEriC_ : when is the dlc coming out?
We are on track quarter 1 2019. However, that does not mean you have to wait for the upcoming patch. It’ll come before that and we’ll get into that later.
anathema2741 : hopefully poison themed
He’s got some green damage I would say.
mauric1us : quest also give increased co?
Well, quests on Elite and Ultimate already gave more XP than Normal so if you complete a quest on this difficulty you’re going to get a lot of levels right off the bat.
Plasmastrike67 : What other changes are coming to aar? Besides faster initial cast, turn speed increase?
More damage for one. We’re buffing both the base skill, we’re buffing it’s modifier and we’re going through all of the item skill modifiers and it’s received a lot of buffs. It feels a lot better now.
CrateEntertainment : Play some awesome music!
I can do that. So you might have seen some of our recent posts from Skewsound regarding some teasers for an upcoming patch. So in the upcoming patch we’ve finally gone back and we’ve realised that poor Loghorrean has been denied his track all this time and we decided to amend that. So coming up in the next patch, v1.0.7.0, Loghorrean is finally getting his boss music.
http://www.grimdawn.com/media_music.php
snowmanplayer123 : is PRM receiving any changes?
Yes, we’ve actually taken a look at PRM and it’s received some Quality of Life improvements.
nakainrimmel : Blade Trap buff?
Blade Trap is not receiving any major changes.
myhr2 : ho, one question, if you unlock the higher difficulties and then come back and do the quests in lower difficulties, how does it work? loot rewards instead of points?
The rewards are simply disabled. So where you would have received skill points, you do not. It’s as simple as that.
kenm130 : How is the xbox port progressing? Any updates?
I don’t have any major news for you in that regard. It is progressing, Rhis is working hard on that. It’s basically going through all the certification steps. Actually I think most recently it’s had some testing requirements which need to be done followed by more certification stuff. So it’s coming, it’s rolling.
wildarms2 : do we need to finish the game before we can unlock Ultimate or can we just start a new toon on Ultimate ?
You need at least one character on Ultimate difficulty to be able to buy the tokens, but after that any new characters you start can start in Ultimate right away.
Smaraud : wouldn’t it mean if u play 4 man lvl 1 on ult diff allmsot imposible to kill mobs as more players increase toughness ? of mobs
If you play 4 man level 1 on Ultimate difficulty it’s going to be tough, but not that tough.
myhr2 : and how does it work for Reputations? Say I go straight into Ultimate and befriend Anasteria, what happens if I go back to Normal?
The same thing that would happen if you do it on any other character. You achieve respect whatever choices you made on different difficulties and if you choose to stay on the same side you keep doing things the same way. If you choose to switch sides, it’s going to affect all the other difficulties as well and that’s how it’s always worked.
SkullFire58 : How about the Switch version?
I’m not sure that’s likely any time soon. Right now we’re focussing on the Xbox port. Whether we do any other ones in the future is really up to Medierra to decide where he wants to focus our resources. We don’t exactly have an infinite number of programmers and they’re very busy.
Alarius : so now basically we can do normal/veteran then jump straight into ultimate? @CrateEntertainment
You could even skip Normal/Veteran if you want. That’s your choice.
DenisMashutikov : Zantai, what about update Modding tools? I ever made topic with wish list on forum
You’re using the same tools we do and in general we are the lowest priority when it comes to putting new features into the game because we can endure it and you guys are getting the good stuff for actual gameplay. However, with the next patch we have actually updated the engine and it does now support PDS Max 2019 which means you do not need PDS Max 2012 any more if you want to make any models or animations.
Dragon_RW : Hi, will this engine still use a single core to do all processing?
That is a misconception. I am well aware that the engine is heavily based on one core, it does not however run on a single core, it never has. We’ve actually made improvements to that over the years and it utilises additional cores more than it does many years ago. Could that be improved? With infinite resources anything can be improved, but there are diminishing returns.
Smaraud : if i start lvl 1 on ult will we be able to see legendary loot right from start or still goes on lvl 50 only ?
The loot is still the same level. The legendaries are not going to drop before you’re level 50 just as before. It’s all working exactly as it is now, we’re not adding lower level versions of items.
apouche_ : have you established a price on newly expac?
Not final. I will tell you it’s going to be pretty comparable to Ashes of Malmouth. I think Ashes of Malmouth was pretty reasonably priced for what you guys got in it and Forgotten Gods is as big, if not bigger, in terms of content. It has a huge story chapter, it has the Shattered Realm, a new class, mobility skills, tons of new features like these tokens.
Speltidning : How about adding a keyword search function for constellations that highlights the search term?
I don’t know, that sounds pretty complicated. I guess we’ll see what we can do about that. Oh look, there is it. Coming up in the upcoming patch, patch 1.0.7 - which means the one coming sooner than the expansion - we are going to be adding a search function for the Devotion screen. Let’s take a look. Offensive. Every star that has offensive ability or offensive I guess will light up.
princexavier123 : I WILL PAY 20 USD JUST FOR THIS
Well good news for you, this is actually coming in the next patch which means you don’t need the expansion for it. We felt that this is a feature that has not only been highly requested by the community, but it’s actually going to be very useful for new players to get into the Devotion screen and feel less overwhelmed by the sheer breadth of it. If you can start searching for specific constellations, searching for specific stats, I feel that reduces the difficulty curve of trying to get into the thing.
dave45788 : @CrateEntertainment can you explain a bit why it was so complicated with that tokens ??
So, first off the game’s inherent balance is built around you progressing from Normal to Elite to Ultimate. So there were some concerns there that things might be too skewed in terms of difficulty, but ultimately we decided that if you’re going to be doing this you’re probably pretty experienced in the game already, you’ve already been on at least Elite difficulty so if you accept the risks, there you go.
The second thing though, and the bigger concern, was the fact that we have those attribute and skill point rewards on Normal and Elite. For most players at the very least they felt compelled to do those quests on Normal and on Elite difficult for every character. Which means, even if you rushed through the campaign all the way to Loghorrean you still had to do those along the way. And if we added something to allow you to skip difficulties if felt like you should actually be able to skip them, not have to go back to Normal and Elite just to do those quests so that added to the problem to be solved. However, we couldn’t just give you skill points, we had to account for the fact that some players might have already done those quests and that’s kinda what came into making this work. We had a variety of ideas on how to solve it and ultimately we came away with this one. It seemed the simplest and since it was feasible, it’s actually in the game. So now what these tokens do, as I mentioned before, will give you those attribute/skill point rewards and those quests simply don’t any more for those characters.
ShotokanEditor : I wanna find out what happened with the dauther of the mayor of Valbury
Stop by the Forgotten Gods area and maybe you’ll hear something about her.
apouche_ : where’s uroboruuk? this keeps messing up at nightsl
Stay tuned to Forgotten Gods and you may get some answers to that.
Matthew___A : all the answers are in FG but where is FG?
Next year, quarter 1 2019. Coming along well, turning out awesome. Some of the areas we’ve redone recently are looking epic and I look forward to having you guys jump in there as soon as we can.
Matthew___A : Korvak is an eldritch sun? Does that have something to do with the temple in FG?
Does it? Find out.
Plasmastrike67 : What will become of that spooky aetherial man we have the choice of rescuing in Theodin’s area?
Might be a while before we find out.
Zilthoid : @CrateEntertainment any plan to add a search/filter function to the crafting menu?
That unfortunately is a little more complicated than the Devotion screen was and we felt that this was a higher priority. I kept promising to look at getting that as a new feature maybe, but I think this is a much bigger deal. This is huge.
FlamingX21 : current skill points are 244, how many will be in Forgotten Gods in total?
I believe 3 or 4 more skill points given out through quests and the Shattered Realm.
DenisMashutikov : Zantai, will item transmutation save blacksmith bonus, or it will total reroll?
It will totally reroll, it basically makes a whole new item.
MillerThyme51 : can you increase the max level cap of monsters or increase the upper limit that can be faced for the level a player is at?
I’m not sure what the benefit of that would be. It would certainly make it harder, but we can adjust the difficulty in other ways for example with the challenge layers that we’re adding in Forgotten Gods.
apouche_ : you said you would increase legendary drop rate is that still true? and buy how much?
It is true, we are the legendary drop rate proportionally to the new legendaries we are adding. We felt that adding new legendary items shouldn’t penalise you from getting the things you want and the drop rates are accordingly improved. In addition to that we are adding the set transmutation feature or item transmutation and you’ll be able to complete all those sets terribly quicker than before. If you ever got a duplicate it’s not a total loss now.
mordecai_mike : Any chance we can get bonescavenger death grips to proc off of pet killing blows, or a chance on attack to proc the pets. I think it would be a good change for pet builds.
I’m sure certain pet builds would be very happy with that, but that is not the purpose of that item. That is to reward a more hybrid playstyle where you the summoner are actually contributing to the damage.
Kvikling : Will there be new relics? Specifically for vitality damage
You bet there will be new relics.
Herr_Wu : will it be possible to transmute the same item multiple times?
Yes.
Caerbae : what is an ugdenbog flamethrower
Well, we’re still working on these items, but in addition to new monster infrequents from the new enemies you’ll be fighting in Forgotten Gods we’re actually going to be introducing some new monster infrequents to existing enemies. So Ugdenbog Flamethrower for example will drop as you’d expect in the Ugdenbog. And it is a new monster infrequent specific to Forgotten Gods.
Kvikling : Can you show item that alters the auto-attack skill of oathkeeper if there is one?
gokhusan : why can we assign all skills to right click but not left click?
Because left click is by default used to move you around so if you had a skill applied that casts on the ground, you wouldn’t actually be able to move around at all which is why we have it set up this way.
Innoruuk1988 : how many new modifiers in FG ?^^
Oh man, a lot. Let’s see. About 300.
apouche_ : will you make improvements to the soiled trousers? I still want to make its skill my main attack skill
We have actually looked at the Soiled Trousers at the request of Reddit and we have made some improvements to that skill.
anathema2741 : are we going to get a legendary pet ritualist set like the conjurer and the cabalist get?
I believe there is one, yes.
ResidentCeno : will you be making another feature comparison image for FG like you did with AoM? That came in handy.
It does comes in handy and we’ll probably have to do something like that because I do feel it was a good reference quickly and people like it. Look at all this stuff. It’s worth getting.
Xixii1 : Don’t You think that release date in next year ( witch was first planed at the end of this year ) is a big missed opportunity after enormous Diablo Immortal fiasco. and what plans are you having to advertise your game . because i thing this game is gr8 but lack proper advertisement.
I don’t think it’s a missed opportunity because we’re not going to release something before it’s ready. If we released Forgotten Gods now we would have to rush it and I have absolutely no intention of doing that. Nor do we have a reason to. And honestly what we need people that don’t like Diablo Immortal to do is pick up the base game because they haven’t yet and then when they pick up the base game they’ll eventually be interested in the expansion which, as we know, funnily enough is coming pretty soon. And in terms of advertising I think that, unless you throw a lot of money at it, it doesn’t work quite as well as you think. These days advertising is actually a pretty complicated beast. In olden times you’d contact all the big video game sites, pay them for articles, pay them for some advertising and you get the hype you want. These days you’ve got Twitch, you’ve got YouTube, you’ve got all sorts of servers streaming, you’ve got game websites, everyone has their own blog, Reddit, all that stuff is where players hang out. They’re no longer focussed on one thing they’re seeing and it’s not so simple as just throwing money at it and seeing what happens. It’s not like it used to be.
aspru5207 : any planned updates for the Lost Shepherd set? or hellhound skill?
You mean the Shepherd of Lost Souls. I think it did get a buff. Hellhound skills there are still a few skill for the Hellhound that were bugged so that’s a buff among other things.
ChthonicSonic : @Zantai_GD FG will feature Retaliation Damage added to attack. How about non-damagetypes of retaliation (like % Reduced Attack Speed Retaliation, Stun/Confuse Retaliation, Reduced Offensive Ability Retaliation)?
No, they will not get added to the attack, only damage.
boromonokli : But, isn’t adding retaliation damage to active skills just going to make retaliation the same as other playstyles?
Not quite. The big focus of retaliation damage is still on taking hits and surviving those hits. What I’d like to do though is make retaliation playstyles a little more active and not just feel like you stand there and wait for things to die on you. You should feel you can actually contribute to that a little bit. Not to mention that unless you have a mod retaliation damage isn’t working with ranged attacks which means you need something else to kill those ranged mobs. For example the Council in Port Valbury fight is almost impossible for retaliation builds. With these changes you can actually do some damage to those guys without taking a direct hit.
boromonokli : umm, can the forum handle the changelog with the character limit?
It actually couldn’t. I had to increase it by another 4,000 characters.
szpila152 : How long will it take for the expansion to pass without side-missions?
I think if you just do the story content it’ll be a little shorter than Ashes, but then there’s the Shattered Realm on top of that and all these changes we’ve made to old content like rogue-like dungeons having mutators, having their own unique item sets, I think you’ll get at least as many hours out of Forgotten Gods as from Ashes, if not more. With the way the Shattered Realm works there’s so many hours of gameplay there and we’re still adding more levels to it.
ShotokanEditor : And again : Is it true that this is the final Content for the game? Does the story finally folds up? What’s next for grim dawn ?
It is true this is most likely our last big content push for Grim Dawn. I don’t think it’s very likely there’ll be a third expansion. I’m not going to never say never or I will say never say never. It’s not guaranteed it’ll be the last, I think it’s very likely based on sales but ultimately it is a financial decision. In terms of content updates I think it’s very likely that we’ll have some post release patches , we might add more items, we might add more levels to the Shattered Realm, we actually have some ideas for some story bits we could include, but in terms of Grim Dawn’s story I think it will wrap up a lot of story arc that you guys have experienced over the years, but it’s not going to answer all your questions. This isn’t going to be, you know, humanity’s safe and everything’s good. That story goes on longer. If we ever do Grim Dawn 2 for example.
droblit : @CrateEntertainment does the next patch means GD becomes 64-bit game or the transfer to 64-bit is reserved for the expansion?
The 64 bit client was not quite ready for the patch, we’ll be saving it for a future update. Most likely we’ll do another patch right as the expansion comes out and that will probably have the 64 bit version included.
MillerThyme51 : Will there be more lore notes added in the game?
Yeah. We’ve written a ton of lore notes. I think about 40,000 words of new lore notes that we’ve written for Forgotten Gods.
deathspank139 : Will there be more defiler item support? Its quite poor now…
I agree with you which is why there are more defiler item support coming up.
snowmanplayer123 : is CrateCon still an idea for the future?
I’m sure it’s an idea in somebody’s head. I don’t’ think we’re really considering it.
Kvikling : Will drain essence with gravechill get any balance changes or item support?
Yep, there is more item support for gravechill in the next expansion.
Cyburn : Is it better than the Lokarr Quest ?
It’s certainly different. I wish you guys good luck.
snowmanplayer12 : will Gargabol’s Corruption be getting a small buff?
Don’t remember off the top of my head if we looked at that item recently. Gonna say probably. I think we did. At the very least it’s getting some Oathkeeper support in Forgotten Gods.
letmewinc : any arena pvp plans for future?
You guys want a pvp arena I think you should mod it in. I don’t think it makes sense for us to officially support pvp because that really splits the focus on how the game is found. Pvp and pve are different beasts, they need to be handled differently.
kinointernational : can you show one new pet ? pls !
This little buddy of mine Eldritch Raptor.
ShotokanEditor : It was asked before and i was wondering if there was any progress or even anything about this. Are the fx ever gonna change colors depending the mutators? From fire (orange fx color) to poison (green fx color)?
As this has come up a lot before and been answered many times, this is actually a very complicated thing to do. The way we do it right now is literally manually so every time we do this for a skill we actually have to do it by hand, sometimes it requires tech changes so to do it for every single skill, every mutator and modifier would take a lot of work. Or we would need a tech solution that dynamically alters the RGB values according to damage type which would be a ton of work so no, we’re not planning something like that.
shermergorn : new patch will be on 22-25 December?
That seems like an arbitrary date. It’ll be sooner than that actually. Because patch 1.0.7.0 - and you guys are hearing it here on the stream for the first time - is actually coming next week. Patch is ready. Just a few more final tests and bug fixes, it’s going out to you guys next week. Our largest changelog yet. Which means this Devotion search which I’ve been talking about is coming to you next week.
boromonokli : I don’t get it… so more pets are on items only…
How else would you picture that considering we’re not adding another summoning mastery. I mean it’s that or you don’t get any more pets. We do have this for the Oathkeeper however, a player scaling pet.
Seltsamuel : How long does the guy last? Wasn´t the skill on a timer?
It was, now it’s not. He’s permanent. Just like that, he’s going to hang out with me forever. We’ve actually done the same thing for Blade Spirits for Nightblade. They’re permanent pets.
ChthonicSonic : @Zantai_GD GrimTools update with FG content as a Christmas present. Feasible or too soon?
Too soon. Item art’s not done. We need to get all the item art in before we can have Dammit can put up the grimtools for you. I suspect we’ll do it early like last time. We’ll have him update the database ahead of the expansion and you guys can peruse it at your leisure of all that’s coming.
frankstar : @CrateEntertainment when will we get a native Linux version. im waiting way to long for it
We cannot justify our resources for a Linux version, I’m sorry to say that. Linux is unfortunately just not enough of a market share to warrant expending programmer time on it. For the same reason we don’t have a Mac version and Macs might actually have a higher percentage of the market.
CepheidSauron : Rumor has it that you won’t be around for GD2
If GD2 turns out like Half Life 3 then sure I won’t be.
gargamel191 : Why cant GOG players play with Steam players?
Because it’s a different platform and servers. We need to host our own servers then they could connect together, which we don’t have.
kinointernational : have you ever expected such a big success of Grim Dawn
When we started out our goal for success started at 200,000 copies. We told ourselves we shift that many copies we’ll be okay, we can keep working on what we’re doing, maybe make the game a little bit bigger, maybe make an expansion or two and we’ll see how it goes. And then the project started taking longer than we thought because we wanted to make it bigger, do more Acts, more classes, increase the level cap and then said okay, maybe half a million copies would be a good range to aim for. Since then Grim Dawn’s sold close to 1.5 million so it has exceeded our expectations in a good way. The expansion has also exceeded our expectations which is why we’re doing a second expansion. The second expansion would have to exceed our expectations quite a bit because there is a diminishing return for each expansion you release.
Syphin3 : but…what if the city builder game fails
That would be very unfortunate. But we are in a financial position where, if it fails, we’re not going to go under. We’re actually looking into ramping up other projects in the future to kind of have a cascading progression of project releases. So we’re always working on something, even though something is ramping up. So even if the town builder doesn’t do too well, which hopefully it does not, then we’ll still be okay.
EXTREMEGAMER29 : Will there be any changes to crafting in FG?
No major changes there.
Dikkiedik92 : I am really curious about the city builder (RTS?) when you guys will give a big update or hint about it ? @CrateEntertainment @Zantai @Grava
That’s really up to Medierra. We need to get a website up first before we can really hype it up too much. Hopefully early next year, we’ll see.
All right, it’s three thirty now, I think I spoiled enough things for you guys today. You know the expansion is coming next year, you know the patch is coming next week. I hope you love the search system. I hope you love those tokens when we add them in Forgotten Gods. Thank you for hanging out with me in the stream. Answered a lot of questions mostly, not a lot of gameplay, but hopefully what you guys were looking for today. So I guess I’ll leave you with some more Grim Dawn Music. Take care guys and see you another time. And remember, there’s going to be a Grim Misadventure on Monday. It’s going to be the last one we do this year, but I promise you it’ll be an interesting one. Take care guys, see you next time.
Video is on Crate’s youtube channel:
Not seriously considering Cratecon, huh. Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep requesting it, same as we do with any other feature we’d like Crate to implement, and hopefully one day it will become a reality.
GM #153 tells us more about the Witch Gods.
And that wraps up the GMs for this year. They will return on 7th January 2019.
The Game! ?
I may troll a bit since I’ve had you two (and big M) to learn from, but for something this important? If anyone was lying it was the big guy himself, but it doesn’t read that way to me. And yeah, I had it on paste - only way to keep up with THE question being asked so many times. So I’ll repeat it once more
